La matanza de un ciervo

Courbet painted this over the winter of 1866 into 1867, and he made it enormous, about 3.5 metres tall and 5 wide. That scale was the provocation. Canvases that size were reserved for kings, battles and saints, and here Courbet gave it to a stag brought down in the snow by a pack of hounds. He was a hunter himself, from this same region of eastern France, and he knew the cold light and the deep snow he was painting. When it was shown at the Salon of 1869 the sheer size of a hunting scene struck people as almost improper. The dying deer fills the middle of the picture while the dogs pile in, and the huntsman stands off to the side, almost an afterthought.