Stags 1862

Curator: Charles-François Daubigny created "Stags" in 1862. This is an etching printed on paper, currently residing here at the Art Institute of Chicago. Editor: Wow. The mood just pulls you right in. There's almost a hush. Those stags drinking...you can practically hear the water rippling. And that huge old tree looming over the scene. Feels like stepping back in time, you know? Curator: Absolutely. And it's important to remember Daubigny’s radical engagement with representing nature as a politically charged landscape. His seemingly idyllic scenes often conceal underlying social critiques regarding land ownership and access. Editor: Right, I see it now. The detail's amazing for an etching, especially on that distant foliage and sky. The lines sort of vibrate against each other. There is something powerful here…but it is subtle. Is he advocating for a preservation? A reminder? Curator: His compositions were deliberately understated, challenging the then-dominant heroic landscapes favored by the establishment. By choosing quotidian subjects like this—simple scenes of animals at rest, he resisted the aristocratic aesthetics that dominated the art world. Editor: I hadn't thought about it like that... I think he is trying to capture the spirit of it. That quick fleeting moment. This landscape could become buildings and private property... he is stopping us for a brief second and showing us how peaceful the moment is...it has almost an activist feel if that's the right word... Curator: Exactly. By creating artwork focused on humble, yet harmonious rural environments, Daubigny promoted values of conservation, equality, and agrarian communalism. The "everyday" then becomes subversive, imbued with political significance. Editor: He manages to evoke this immense nostalgia for places that feel at once so real, and entirely dreamlike... That stag, in my imagination is running still today. He’s drinking still today, while the world races by and his simple etching makes me think... that everything important still remains, waiting, hidden, but enduring in our imaginations. Curator: Yes, there’s something so potent in the understated way Daubigny delivers his messages through this evocative landscape.