Tristan Lacroix - The Deer

Tristan Lacroix, Cahors, 1849 – Paris, 1920. Portrait of a Stag. Oil on canvas. 24 x 33 cm (42 x 51 cm with frame). Signed and dated lower right "Tristan Lacroix / 1890". Very fine fluted frame decorated with acanthus leaves and a frieze of twisted ribbons. Originally from the southwest of France, Tristan Lacroix moved to Paris and became a famous animal painter who exhibited at the Paris Salon and won a medal at the 1889 Salon. Our painting, dated 1890, is original in its subject matter: a beautiful portrait of a stag, depicted frontally, very lively in a lovely, luminous autumn landscape. It is reminiscent of a painting exhibited by Tristan Lacroix at the 1883 Salon, which was very successful. The critic Charles Bigot describes it in these terms: “We must also mention, still in this room, a large landscape of the Fontainebleau forest, the Gorge aux loups, by Mr. Tristan Lacroix. Since Courbet's Combat de cerfs, no one had dared to treat the landscape on such vast dimensions. The artist has not had cause to regret this boldness: the clearing in the background is fresh and luminous; in the foreground, the doe listening, sheltered behind a rock, lending an ear to some distant sound, is full of life and grace.”