Jagdbeute 1912

This is ‘Jagdbeute’ by Carl Reichert, made with oil on canvas. The mark making here is so tight, it's like Reichert is trying to make paint disappear. He blends everything, edges, surfaces, to give you the realest dog, the realest fox. But it's like, realer than real, right? How do you even paint fur like that? Look how the light catches on the back of the fox, how he's even captured the gleam in its eye as the dogs close in. The way he's built up the paint in layers is almost invisible. There's a kind of patience here, a devotion to detail, that reminds me of someone like Durer. And that says something about art, about how we keep looking and learning from each other across time, trying to get closer to something we can never quite reach. Trying to capture the real, or maybe something beyond it.