봄, 소리에 귀 기울이는 쫓기는 노루

Courbet was a serious hunter, and he liked to say that the wild country of his native Franche-Comté taught him more than any studio. This roe deer stands in a clearing by a stream, ears up, caught in the instant it hears the hunt. The phrase in the French title, aux écoutes, means exactly that listening alertness. The light is unusually soft and green for Courbet, whose pictures more often run to dark earth and stone. He showed it at the Paris Salon of 1868, where for once the critics were unanimous in their praise. It later hung in the home of Aristide Boucicaut, the man behind the Bon Marché department store, before his widow left it to the French state.