The Dead Fox

Courbet grew up in hunting country in the Franche-Comte and shot game all his life, and in the 1860s he turned that into the most saleable line of work he ever had. Dead deer, hares and foxes went to collectors who would not have touched his stonebreakers or his village funeral, and a hunting piece was something a cautious buyer under the Second Empire could hang without argument. This canvas is dated around 1864, the year the Salon jury refused his Venus and Psyche as indecent. It is a large picture for its subject, roughly a metre wide and more than a metre tall, which is the scale he would normally give a standing figure. The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm has had it since 1970.