Chaïm Soutine - Flayed rabbit

• Title: Flayed rabbit (Lapin écorché

)

• Artist: Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943)
• Date: 1921
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 73 x 60 cm

In 1913 Chaim Soutine fled the poverty and cultural isolation of Lithuania for Paris, with the help of funding from a generous patron who championed his talent. Although Soutine enrolled at the studio of the academic painter Fernand Cormon for formal instruction, he immersed himself in the collections of the Musée du Louvre and avidly studied the lessons of his predecessors, whose legacies he emulated and also challenged.

Departing from still-life traditions that celebrated the delectation of plenty, Soutine's rendering of the flayed rabbit conveys violence and suffering. The tawny, soft fur still sheathing the animal's hind legs starkly contrasts with the bloodied, exposed flesh of the rest of the carcass. Hallmarks of the artist's technical verve, the energetic brushwork and thick impasto--lurid reds and pinks for the raw meat, yellows and browns for the grimy, stained cloth--heighten the sense of brutality. Moreover, the permanent stare of the rabbit's clouded eye further underscores the subject's pathos.

Judith Dolkart, The Barnes Foundation- Masterworks (New York- Skira Rizzoli, 2012), 119.