Форель

Courbet painted this hooked trout in 1873, and it is hard not to read the man himself into it. Two years earlier the Paris Commune had fallen, and Courbet, who had taken part, was blamed for the toppling of the Vendôme column. He served six months in prison and was then handed a crushing bill to help rebuild it, which drove him into exile in Switzerland. There he painted several big trout, fish pulled from the river Loue near where he had grown up. This one lies on the rocks, the line still in its jaw, caught and gasping but not yet dead. On a version of the subject he inscribed the words in vinculis faciebat, made in chains. Dutch painters had long turned fish into calm displays of a good catch. Courbet's is a creature that has just been fought and knows it.