Antique French Oil on Canvas Stag Hunt Painting in Giltwood Frame, by H. De Forges

A beautiful oil on canvas rendering of a stag hunt, presented in a fluted giltwood frame with a bundled husk border and large, parted leaves in the corners. The painting is signed in the lower right corner by the artist, “H. de Forges”, a member of the Barbizon French school of the late 1800s, who specialized in animal hunt scenes.

The vibrancy of de Forges’ painting has not diminished over time; the colors seem to pop right off the canvas. A blue sky with some low-lying white clouds hangs above trees mainly bereft of leaves, indicating it is late autumn. Slender grass, ranging from green to brown, surrounds a watering hole in the middle of a clearing, with a single stag near the water’s edge. Eight white hunting dogs with black and tan markings surround the deer on one side of the pond. Behind the pack is a brown horse ridden by a huntsman dressed in red and black, preparing to sound the hunting horn. Two more riders in red, black, and white, also on brown horses, are emerging from a small hill behind the deer.

Hunting, always a very important pastime in France, became one of the more popular genres in 19th century art, along with with quality pastoral and landscape paintings. Realism was a defining feature of the Barbizon School, as artists were attracted to spending more time living and painting in the natural world. Our hunt scene depicts the surrounding of prey, or pre-hunt revelry. The beautifully colored oil on canvas stag hunt painting by de Forges would be the perfect addition for a gentleman’s office, study, or game room.