HUNTING MUSEUMS OF FRANCE

Cultural Heritage
Something For Hunters to Appreciate About Effete Old France

Years ago I raised my hand at a Palm Beach auction meant to support the creation of a world-class “Museum of Hunting and the Horse.” I got a bargain limited edition Manfred Schatz, but 20 years later the U.S. still hasn’t gotten a museum that demonstrates how much our cultural heritage owes to tens of thousands of years as a hunting species. By the cultural heritage of hunting I don’t mean roomfuls of stuffed animals and a safari jacket. I mean the centuries-spanning output of artists, craftsmen, inventors and visionary collectors, all inspired by hunting.

This means that if you want to visit museums dedicated to hunting—beautifully displayed arms and game-killing inventions of every sort, tip-top paintings and sculptures, regal table settings, battle-exposed knives and swords and ingenious accoutrements of all sorts—you will need to visit Europe, especially France, but also Germany and Austria. One trip and you realize how far hunting museums in America have to go.

You may also realize there are things you didn’t know about the cultural heritage of hunting that are well worth knowing, beginning with the story of Saint Hubert, the Patron Saint of Hunters.

On Good Friday in 683, Hubert, the bloodthirsty son of the Duke of Aquitaine, was hotly pursuing the finest stag of his career when it turned to defend itself. To reprimand Hubert for hunting on the day of Christ’s death, a vision of the crucifix appeared between the stag’s ten-pointed antlers, and Hubert became an evangelist on the spot. All Europe celebrates his mass on November 3 with smartly uniformed hunters accompanied by yelping hounds and sounding horns. The services are as moving as Taps played beneath a waving American flag, and many hunters are seen discreetly wiping away tears. St. Hubert’s conversion has been immortalized over the centuries in dozens of fine paintings.

If you see a huge painting of a terrified wild boar or wolf with a pack of snarling dogs at its heels, it’s probably the work of either of the two rival court artists whose names appear in bold in the history of French sporting art: François Desportes (1661-1743) and Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1775). Oudry probably holds a stronger position in art history, although Desportes is appreciated for his large dramatic compositions, which are often structured around subtle architectural details like fallen garden walls or the sharp play of light on a strongly developed background landscape. Desportes’ keen sense of observation and sensitivity to animals is obvious in the accuracy of both their expression and stance.

Dog lovers will enjoy studying the many paintings of the various royal hounds like “Blondie” and “Diane,” whose genealogy is as complicated as that of European royalty itself. Each reign, from Charlemagne to Napoleon, had its favorite breed, forever evolving from crossbreeding experiments and introductions from abroad. If Louis XIV’s hounds are the best known, this is likely due to a series of exquisite studies and portraits of the royal bitches by Desportes.

Oudry is considered the more “decorative” of the two artists, with lively colors and a sense of scale and design suitable to the huge task of decorating the endless walls and corridors of royal and princely chateaux masquerading as hunting chalets, like Chantilly, some 25 miles north of Paris, which today also houses an outstanding Living Museum of the Horse, much like the one we’d hope to have in America. Both Desportes and Oudry are very appealing and rarely disappoint.

You’d have to visit a dozen good museums in the States to see the equivalent sporting arms in any good European museum.

For example, the Pauilhac Collection in Paris consists of hunting swords and over 150 antique firearms. Hunting spears, swords and knives were hardly distinguishable from war weaponry until the 17 th century, when etched or engraved hunting motifs began to appear on the blades. In the 18 th century, antler and ebony grips became increasingly elaborate, inlaid with pearls, ivory and agate. Some knives carried ingenious piggyback cases containing skinning utensils and cutlery; others have a “billette” or crossbar to prevent the hunter from following the thrust into his prey’s embrace. Handles shaped like animals are typical of the Napoleonic Era swords.

You’ll also see conscientiously arranged displays showing the evolution and refinement of every possible firing mechanism, whether German, Italian, French or English. The entire history of firearms is arranged in a nutshell here: 16 th and 17 th century matchlock (à mèche) guns; interior and exterior wheel-lock (à rouet) guns; 17 th and 18 th century flintlocks (à silex) guns; and 19 th-century percussion guns.

In the same museum is Napoleon III’s carbine, which fires seven shots at a time, and the hunting carbine given by Napoleon to General Comte Rapp, created in 1809 by Nicolas-Noel Boutet (1761-1833), the famous Imperial Court of Versailles gunmaker, along with every kind of experiment involving rotating, triangular and square barrels.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow, French hunters yearn to be vetted into the corps of the Officiers de Louveterie – the Officers of Wolf Hunters. These are the Navy Seals of hunters, the guys you see lined along the highway when a tiger escapes from a zoo or when it’s time to slaughter hundreds of rabies-infected foxes in a 50-mile swath of Alsace-Lorraine.