November 6, 2016
This week I thought I’ll match some photographs I took with paintings that celebrate the same theme.
I start with hunters, since I met two of them last week. It was a chance encounter. I had the luxury of a whole afternoon to roam sans dogs and was out at the dike on Sauvie Island. Two hunters came and I chatted them up. It took a full 20 minutes to warm them to the idea of allowing me to photograph them and even then it was hasty, just two shots each. But I learned that one of them had hunted this spot for 37 years, and that they usually spend the hours from 7 am to 4 pm crouched somewhere, to end up – with luck – with 2 or 3 ducks. But they love it. And blew every single bird whistle they had for my amusement.
They use carts to carry their gear and their prey; they also build these little stake-out huts with corn camouflage all along the water ways on Sauvie.
The painting I chose is 17th century French, by ALEXANDRE-FRANÇOIS DESPORTES – the description found on the Louvre website.
An uncompromising self-portrait
In his reception piece to the Académie, Desportes breaks with the tradition of atelier self-portraits. Instead, he gives himself the air of a man of quality, a lover of the hunt and nature. The meticulously rendered dogs and game are a direct allusion to his specialty as a painter of animals. This painting, with its brilliant execution and sense of color, is as successful in its treatment of the subject – it is an uncompromising self-portrait – as in its rendering of animals or landscape. This is the first important work by a painter who would go on to incarnate the century of Louis XV and develop his talent in themes of the hunt. In order to achieve perfection in the treatment of animals, landscapes, and accessories, Desportes worked a great deal from nature, creating numerous animal sketches and outdoor oil studies.
The self portrait could not be any more different from my reluctant subjects. The painter might have been uncompromising – my subjects were hesitantly compromising. Nor were they vain…..
And below is an amazing report on contemporary hunters in a far away place, Tajikistan. Writing, information and photography all brilliant.
