The Quarry

The Quarry: Deer Hunt in the Forests of the Grand Jura is an 1857 painting by the French artist Gustave Courbet. It was his first work on a hunting theme and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Description The painting depicts the aftermath of a hunt. On the left, two hunting dogs approach a dead roe deer that has been hung from a pine tree by its hind leg, about to eat its quarry as is tradition after a French venery hunt. One has already begun to lap up the deer's blood, and may be trying to keep the other away. Behind them, in the painting's middle, a bearded man in a hat (a self-portrait of Courbet) leans against a second tree alongside his rifle, his arms crossed, smoking a pipe. Behind him, on the painting's right, the young (master of hounds), dressed in red, sits on a treestump blowing his horn. History Courbet was an avid hunter in his native Franche-Comté. The Quarry, set in that regions's Jura Mountains, was the first of many works in which he depicted hunting. He constructed the painting through a series of successive additions: first the deer and the hunter, then the young man and the dogs, and then background areas on additional pieces of canvas. The painting, 2.1 meters tall by 1.8 meters wide, was first displayed at the Salon de Paris in June 1857. Célestin Nanteuil's lithograph of the work, cropped of the area above the hunter's head, appeared in L'Artiste in July 1858.