Carcasses
1850
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Alexandre Gabriel Decamps
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps was a French painter noted for his Orientalist works.
See the richer artist page1850
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Carcasses is a 1850 by Alexandre Gabriel Decamps, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see two dead animals—maybe sheep—hanging from hooks in a dim, empty room. Decamps painted this about 200 years after Rembrandt’s famous *Slaughtered Ox*, but he swapped drama for quiet. Instead of one bold carcass, he shows two small, pale bodies in soft light. The mood feels more like a still life than a shock. If you like this quiet take, look up chiaroscuro—the way artists use light and shadow to shape a scene.
With the subject of Carcasses, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps was following an old artistic tradition. He was inspired by Rembrandt's (1606-1669) Slaughtered Ox (see photo) which he would have seen at the Louvre Museum. Decamps greatly admired the Dutch master and owned several paintings by him. In spite of the inspiration from Rembrandt, Decamps's watercolor of about 200 years later conveys a different mood. Instead of focusing on a single butchered corpse as Rembrandt had, Decamps viewed his bodies and slabs of meat from further back, and he included domestic objects and a background figure…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps was a French painter noted for his Orientalist works.
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