Still Life with Three Trout from the Loue River 1873

Gustave Courbet made this painting of three trout sometime after 1865, using oil on canvas. The image presents a cluster of dead fish in the open air. Courbet was devoted to Realism, which sought to represent the lives of ordinary people and places. In this painting, he rejects the traditional still life, where carefully arranged fruit or flowers symbolize wealth and abundance. Instead, he offers us an image of decay, but also a tribute to the natural world, specifically, the wild Loue River of his native Franche-Comté. Courbet was fascinated by landscape, hunting and fishing, all of which were popular pastimes in rural France. Some have suggested that Courbet identified with the trout, having been forced to live in exile in Switzerland after the collapse of the Paris Commune in 1871. But we can only speculate about that. What we can know is that a close reading of social history will help you better understand the work of an artist.