罠にかかった狐

Courbet grew up in Ornans, in the hills of eastern France, and he hunted all his life. By 1860 that passion was feeding his painting. Here a fox lies in the snow, held by an iron trap, and what the picture is really about is surfaces. Courbet worked much of the snow with a palette knife instead of a brush, dragging and scraping the paint so it reads as something heavy and cold rather than a flat white sheet. The fur he built up stroke by stroke until you can almost feel it. He showed a run of hunting and game pictures in these years, and even viewers who cared nothing for his politics granted that he could paint an animal like almost no one else then working.