Hunters in the Snow

Courbet grew up in Ornans, in the wooded hills of the Franche-Comté near Besançon, and he hunted that country himself. In the 1860s he painted a run of snow scenes from it, and this canvas, which also goes by the title The Poachers, is one of them. There is nothing heroic in the treatment. A figure moves across deep snow with a dog and a gun, the whole thing built up in thick, blunt strokes of white and grey and brown, the way Courbet insisted ordinary country should be painted, without polish. Hunting pictures sold well to collectors, and Courbet, by then a notorious public figure and often short of money, produced a good many. This one stayed close to home and hangs in the main museum of Besançon, the nearest city to the ground it shows.