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The Quarry (La Curée)

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
1856

Medium/Technique Oil on canvas
Dimensions 210.2 x 183.5 cm (82 3/4 x 72 1/4 in.)
Credit Line Henry Lillie Pierce Fund
Accession Number18.620
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
Courbet was an avid hunter and set this scene in the Jura Mountains in his native Franche-Comté region, near France’s border with Switzerland. The artist portrays himself as a huntsman, resting quietly against a tree, smoking a pipe. His gun hangs between him and his prize. Rendered with care and a delicate naturalism, Courbet’s roe deer attracted attention when he exhibited this painting at the Paris Salon of 1857; Théophile Gautier considered the animal “irreproachable…one of the best things in the exhibition,” noting veristic details like its thick, felted coat and moist, glistening nose. Yet a spatial disjointedness isolates the figures and animals from cohesively integrating, an effect caused in part by Courbet’s additive process. As he constructed this composition, Courbet enlarged the original canvas, joining additional pieces to accommodate the seated horn blower, hunting dogs, and surrounding forest foliage.

InscriptionsLower right: G. Courbet
Provenance1858, sold by the artist to van Isacker, Antwerp, for 8,000 francs; 1862, exchanged by van Isacker with the Galerie Cadart et Luquet, Paris [see note 1]; April, 1866, brought to the United States by Cadart et Luquet and sold to the Allston Club, Boston, for 25,000 francs ($5000) [see note 2]; about 1873, upon the dissolution of the Allston Club, passed to Henry Sayles (b. 1834 - d. 1918), Boston; 1918, by inheritance to his nephew, George Tappan Francis, Boston and Needham, MA; 1918, sold by George Tappan Francis to the MFA for $75,000. (Accession Date: September 12, 1918)

NOTES:
[1] See René Brunesoeur, Museum Contemporain: Biographies. Gustave Courbet (Paris, 1867), p. 22 and Robert Fernier, "En Voyage avec Courbet," Les Amis de Gustave Courbet 1966, p. 43. Citing Fernier, Bruce K. MacDonald suggested that the artist "probably transferred the painting" to him in 1858; see his "The Quarry by Gustave Courbet," MFA Bulletin 67, no. 348 (1969): 52. Van Isacker exhibited the painting in 1860; see "Catalogue de Tableaux Tirés de Collections d'Amateurs" (26 Boulevard des Italiens, Paris, 1860), cat. no. 125 (measuring 160 x 175 cm.). Courbet enlarged the painting in 1862 at the insistence of the dealer Luquet.

[2] On the sale of the painting to the Allston Club, see "Boston Painters and Paintings," The Atlantic Monthly 62 (October, 1888): 503-504 and Martha A. S. Shannon, "Boston Days of William Morris Hunt" (Boston, 1923), pp. 87-88. The Allston Club exhibited the painting in 1866 ("First Exhibition," cat. no. 1) and 1867 ("Second Annual Exhibition," cat. no. 1), and lent it to the Boston Athenaeum between 1869 and 1872.

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