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Old July 31st, 2006, 11:21 PM posted to alt.flyfishing
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Default life imitates art


Mr. Opus McDopus wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
I was quite stricken by the similarities in the up close impression of
a trout being caught.

Take a minute to contrast Jeff's Montana picture of a gorgeous trout
with Gustave Courbet's 1872, "The Trout" (Oil on canvas).

http://css.sbcma.com/timj/roffpics/2...a/P7100056.JPG
http://artchive.com/artchive/C/courb...trout.jpg.html

Take a hard look at the trout, isolated from the rod, in the largest
image you can see.


Why? What am I supposed to be looking for?

In the painting, it appears as though the fish was caught on *live* bait.

Op


Fair question.

A famous Robert Hughes quote is:

"A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than
Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion."

All 'you' see is a fish caught on live bait?

Gordon Wickstrom in, "Notes from an Old Fly Book" says:

"As we gaze at the picture, we are spared nothing. The trout's sentient
eye, filled with fear, pain, desolation, holds the angler in its
supplication - or perhaps, accusation"

Still, you just see the fish? The "look" of the trout is
indistinguishable between the pictures.

Thomas McIntyre in the short piece "Being Uncool in a Cold Stream"
written for Sport's Afield wrote:

"Hemingway said some place in his oeuvre that, because we assumed a
godlike stance not in keeping with the humility of the pious, it was a
pagan act to take an animal's life. How much more pagan and godlike -
even maniamanical - then, must it be to grant an animal it's life. Now,
there is a matter more than serious enough for me."

The modern catch and release angler really
seems to have lost his sense about these things. The trout, in a wet
golf game, becomes just a click, a detente, a 'trophy', if you will.
Yet, there it is, clearly, starkly, in Jeff's picture and Gustav's
painting, the trout knows it is dying, regardless of our intentions.
And we pat ourselves on the back when, after hooking and hauling the
trout, we grant it it's life in some moral delusion that this is
somehow 'good'.

A question posed here years back, "if you had to kill every legal fish
you caught would you continue to fish?". The answer was almost
unanimously no, that really, the modern fisherman doesn't even really
like to eat trout and certainly does not want the burden of having to
prepare, carry out, clean and cook their catch. I find this supremely
ironic and I would love for the sportsmen to have the streams and lakes
back on the premis that, if an angler can not see the Courbet in his
actions, than he should not be allowed astream.

Your pal,

Halfordian Golfer
Guilt replaced the creel
A cash flow runs through it