Centaurs Hunting Boars 1866 - 1867

L.A. Schou’s ‘Centaurs Hunting Boars’ was made with oil on canvas. The loose brushwork and muted palette give it a feeling of incompleteness, as if we are glimpsing a fleeting moment, a study rather than a finished work. Looking at the surface, you get a real sense of how Schou built up the image layer by layer, the thin washes of paint allowing the texture of the canvas to show through, unifying the composition. It's a fairly conventional approach, but the handling of the paint is what makes it interesting. The artist is clearly engaged with the materiality of the oil paint, exploiting its fluidity and translucence to create a sense of atmosphere and movement. It’s important to understand that this painting, with its traditional materials and classical subject matter, is deeply entwined with the social and economic context of its time. Schou died young at age 29, but not before creating this painting, where through its materiality, process and social context, we can understand the complex meaning of his work.