Reading Visual Art: 182 Deer

Deer are among the animals that appear in the oldest known paintings in caves in Europe. Although relatively rare in works of the modern era, they play some unusual roles. In this brief survey of their appearance on canvas in European art, I exclude motifs of stags and stag-hunting, as they have distinct associations.

Deer have some roles in classical mythology, most importantly in the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia at Aulis, during the mounting of the war against Troy. The combined Greek fleet assembled in that sheltered port on the eastern coast of central Greece. When he was out hunting there, Agamemnon killed a deer in a grove sacred to the goddess Artemis then boasted of his superior hunting skills. She sought vengeance for his act by becalming the fleet, demanding the human sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia before she would provide the fleet with favourable winds. Some accounts of that sacrifice claim that at the last moment Artemis substituted a deer for Iphigenia.

Domenichino (1581–1641), The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (c 1609), fresco, dimensions not known, Palazzo Giustiniani-Odescalchi, Viterbo, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Among the earliest post-classical depictions of this is Domenichino’s fresco in Viterbo, Italy, of The Sacrifice of Iphigenia from about 1609. The princess kneels, her wrists bound together, as an axe is about to be swung at her neck. Onlookers at the left are distraught, as Agamemnon watches impassively from the right. But in the distance, Artemis is leading a deer towards the altar, hopefully to make the substitution.

Charles de La Fosse (1636–1716), The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (1680), oil on canvas, 224 x 212 cm, Château de Versailles, Versailles, France. Wikimedia Commons.

Charles de La Fosse’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia (1680) uses a powerful triangular composition to arrange the figures, with Artemis at the head, telling Agamemnon to spare the young woman, to his evident surprise. The large sacrificial knife, dropped from Agamemnon’s right hand, rests by Iphigenia’s right foot. At the lower right, one of the Greek warriors, possibly Achilles, is still resigned to her sacrifice, but the warrior standing above is already smiling with relief.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (1770), oil on canvas, 65 × 112 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Tiepolo’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia was painted nearly a century later in 1770. Iphigenia sits, almost spotlit with her pale flesh, as the priest, perhaps Agamemnon himself, looks up to the heavens, the knife held in his right hand. In a direct line with that hand comes Artemis in her characteristic divine cloud, ready with the deer. Below is a group of women already holding the sacred bowl up to catch the sacrificial victim’s blood, and in the left distance are some of the thousand ships of the Greek fleet, waiting to sail.

Louis Billotey (1883-1940), Iphigenia (1935), media and dimensions not known, Musée d’Art et d’Industrie de Roubaix, Roubaix, France. Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Billotey, who had won the Prix de Rome in 1907 but is now forgotten, painted his version of Iphigenia in 1935. Clytemnestra looks far distant at the left as she leads her daughter towards the sacrificial altar beside her. Artemis, marked only by her bow and hunting dog, stands at the right, as the deer runs past, knowing who they really intend to sacrifice.

Although not specifically associated with her, the goddess Diana is sometimes shown with a deer she has killed in a hunt.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Diana as Huntress (1867), oil on canvas, 197 × 132 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

Auguste Renoir’s early paining of Diana as Huntress from 1867 shows her in that role, without her customary coronet with a crescent Moon. This was rejected by that year’s Salon, and is one of the first of his paintings in which his model and lover Lise Tréhot posed nude.

There’s an air of mystery about reclusive deer that sometimes associated them with sorcery, including the notorious figures of Medea and Circe.

Bartolomeo Guidobono (1654–1709), Medea Rejuvenates Aeson (c 1700), oil on canvas, 173 x 212 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Bartolomeo Guidobono’s Medea Rejuvenates Aeson from about 1700 shows Medea dressed in an unkempt and wild manner, accompanied by two men. The near-lifeless and pale body of Aeson rests behind her, but a younger man, possibly the rejuvenated Aeson, is materialising under a table. There’s a panoply of symbols associated with magic, including a snake and toad, large tomes of spells on top of which is a lizard, an open fire on a small stand, and Medea is touching a deer with the wand held in her right hand.

Dosso Dossi (–1542), Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape (c 1514-16), oil on canvas, 100 × 136 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

Dosso Dossi’s Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape (c 1514-16) is a remarkably early and realistic mythological landscape, with deep rustic lanes, trees, and a distant farmhouse. Circe leans, naked, at the foot of a tree going through spells on a large tablet, with a book of magic open at her feet. Around her are some of the men whom she took a fancy to and transformed into wild creatures. There’s a spoonbill, a small deer, a couple of dogs, a stag, and up in the trees an owl and what could well be a woodpecker, in the upper right corner. That’s the fate that might have awaited Odysseus and his crew.

Deer appear in other narrative paintings in their role as hunted animals.

Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), Robin Hood and His Merry Men Entertaining Richard the Lionheart in Sherwood Forest (1839), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, Nottingham, England. The Athenaeum.

The London-based Irish painter Daniel Maclise painted Robin Hood and His Merry Men Entertaining Richard the Lionheart in Sherwood Forest in 1839. ‘Good’ King Richard, to whom Robin Hood was loyal, sits drinking under an oak tree at the right, still wearing his armour from the Crusades, the only link between the legends of Robin Hood and the ‘Saracens’ of the Middle East. Various of the ‘Merry Men’ and Maid Marian can be spotted in the crowd: at the left, with a deer over his shoulder is Little John, sat under the same chestnut tree is Friar Tuck, and Robin Hood stands in the centre, in red, with Maid Marian to the right.

Deer can also have symbolic associations with idyllic life in the country.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Pastoral Symphony (1916-20), oil on canvas, 130 x 160 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Pierre Bonnard’s Pastoral Symphony (1916-20) includes multiple symbols of a rural idyll. At the left, a dairymaid is milking a cow. In the centre is a child playing, and at the right side a couple of women are petting a small deer.

Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Among the Sierra Nevada, California (1868), oil on canvas, 182.9 x 305.1 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

When Albert Bierstadt was in Rome during the winter of 1867-68, he painted Among the Sierra Nevada, California, based on his visit to the Sierra Nevada in 1863. There’s a small group of deer with a large stag at the edge of this lake, as well as a flock of birds.

Adrian Stokes (1854–1935), Autumn in the Mountains (1903), tempera on canvas, 80.0 x 106.7 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1903), London. Photographic Rights © Tate 2016, CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/stokes-autumn-in-the-mountains-n01927

Adrian Stokes found two deer approaching young birch trees in his Autumn in the Mountains from 1903, probably when he was travelling in the European Alps.

Of all the animalières, it was Rosa Bonheur who appears to have painted portraits of deer most frequently. She had a distinct advantage in that, as she lived on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau.

Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899), Deer in the Forest of Fontainebleau (1862), pencil, watercolor and gum arabic, 34.4 × 50 cm. Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

She painted this fine watercolour of Deer in the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1862.

Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899), Deer and Faun in a Wood (1893), oil on canvas, 32.5 × 41 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Her oil painting of Deer and Faun in a Wood from 1893 used captive models.