Scena di caccia nella neve

Courbet was a serious hunter, and it tells in what he chose to paint here. This is the end of a stag hunt, the moment the French called the bat-l'eau, when the exhausted deer is driven out of the woods toward frozen water with the dogs closing in. A man who had stood in real winter woods knew that was the instant worth catching. Courbet made it in 1864, in the years after his blunt realism had scandalised Paris, when hunting scenes were both a genuine love and something that sold. Then the picture vanished. It stayed in one family's hands for more than 100 years, unknown to the specialists, until a committee confirmed it as a real Courbet in 2024 and it was shown in public for the first time.