The Runaway Horse

By 1861 Courbet was France's most talked-about painter, the loud champion of realism who insisted on painting only what he could actually see. He was also a devoted hunter, and hunting scenes like this one sold steadily while his larger provocations scandalised the Salon. A piqueur, one of the mounted servants who managed the hounds, has lost his horse, and the animal bolts through the trees as the day fails. The dim, closing light in the woods is the part he cared about. He had grown up among the forests of the Franche-Comte in eastern France and hunted them all his life.