Le Change, episodio di caccia nella Franca Contea

Le change is a term from hunting with hounds. It is the moment the pack loses the deer it has been chasing and swerves onto a fresh one that has crossed the line, which for the huntsman means the day is spoiled. Courbet grew up hunting in the Franche-Comte hills around Ornans and painted the chase from inside it. He signed this canvas in red at the lower left and added the year, 66. Those were good commercial years for him. The Paris Salon had spent a decade treating him as a provocation, then in the mid-1860s took his hunting scenes without argument, and buyers followed. The picture ended up in Denmark, bought by the insurance director Wilhelm Hansen, who spent the First World War acquiring French paintings and built the house at Ordrupgaard around them.