Landscape with stag

by Gustave Courbet (1873)

“Landscape with stag” is a prime example of Gustav Courbet’s early romantic realist style. We see a highly idealized view of a stag in front of a grand waterfall. The painting is rendered in a clear and realist style, although Courbet also painted some more impressionist paintings with the same theme (see below).

It’s no accident that these images are reminiscent of the Disney film “Bambi”. In 1935 Walt Disney visited Münich and purchased no less than 149 art books to give to his animators as source material. Consider, for example, the concept art for “Bambi” by Tyrus Wong, which employs a similar style.

We know for a fact that several of the backgrounds in the opening scenes of Bambi were taken almost directly from another romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich. Consider, for example, “Morgennebel im Gebirge” (Morning fog in the mountain).

The genius of Tyrus Wong is that he used these romantic paintings and infused them with an Asian style, thereby creating the world of Bambi (see below).

It’s interesting to see the way in which German and French romantic landscape painting influenced the Disney classic we know and love today. But it’s also worth noting that such landscape paintings were particularly loved by the Nazis. Hitler was a great admirer of Walt Disney and had “Bambi” screened at his private residence before it was available to the public. The sad irony is that the book on which the film was based, by the Hungarian Jewish author Felix Salten, was meant to be a parable of the way minorities were prosecuted and treated as less than human. His book “Bambi: a life in the woods” was amongst the first to be confiscated and subjected to book-burnings.

But just because the Nazis loved romantic landscape painting doesn’t mean that we can’t admire it today. And while romantic realism is today considered somewhat “kitsch”, it nevertheless continues to resonate especially in animation. Consider, for example, the background work by Kazuo Oga for Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” (see below).

And so even though romantic realism is outmoded as an art genre, its influence continues to resonate today in ways that neither Courbet nor Friedrich could have anticipated. And that’s what Art is all about, isn’t it?

Julian

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