Chien blessé

Perhaps one of Fremiet's most recognizable and celebrated works, Chien courant blessé was originally exhibited in bronze in the 1850 Paris Salon (no. 3397) and subsequently at the Exposition Universelle in 1855 to enormous acclaim. Commissioned for the Ministre de l'Intérieur on 6 October 1849 at a price of 2500 francs, the exhibited bronze model is now housed in the Musée du Louvre. Much like Fremiet's Chatte et ses petits depicting a cat nursing her litter, this sensitive though accurately realistic representation of a hound licking its wound was one of the first works in the animalier genre to celebrate 'la grandeur naturelle' (C. Chevillot, Emmanuel Fremiet: La main et le multiple, Dijon, 1988, p. 78).