A hare fills the frame, looking at us. It is attentive, on high alert, even. It looks ready to scarper at the slightest noise. The animal’s liveliness seems almost proverbial – like a rabbit caught in the headlights? This woodland creature, painted by the American artist Sean Landers in 2023, can currently be found in the heart of Paris, surrounded by numerous other critters. With painstaking detail, the artist has traced each individual hair of the animal’s brown fur and outlined the pearly veins of its hollow, perked-up ears.
Landers was born in 1962 and since the 1980s, a decade known for its forays into conceptual art, he has been, anachronistically, working on figurative painting. With playful and poignant erudition, he draws on different painting traditions from European art history. Among his diverse personal pantheon of artists are William Hogarth, Nicolas Poussin, Théodore Géricault, and Édouard Manet. However, it is his interest in Surrealism that often stands out, particularly the influence of René Magritte.
