Anguish: A Depiction of Grief

"Anguish" or in French we can call it with Angoisses or Angoisse, is an 1878 oil painting by August Friedrich Schenck. August Friedrich Albrecht Schenck was a painter born in Glückstadt in Holstein, now in Germany but then in Denmark. 

The painting was an early acquisition by the gallery, just a few years after it was founded, and has been voted the most popular of the gallery's. The painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1878 under the French title "Angoisses," and then in London the following year. This painting was engraved by Charles Maurand for the French periodical L'Art, and by Tiburce de Mare. The painting was bought by the London art dealer sold to the National Gallery of Victoria, so now the painting is at the National Gallery of Victoria.

This painting called "Anguish" depicts a distraught sheep bleating in grief, her breath freezing in the cold air. The mother sheep is standing over the dead body of her lamb, bloods running from the sheep mouth into white snow, falling down in a scene reminiscent of a pietà. (Christian art depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary cradling Jesus Christ's mortal body after his Descent from the Cross.) The pair of sheep are encircled by a murder of black crows that crowd around under a dull grey cloudy winter sky, waiting for an opportunity to scavenge the carcass.

A senior curator at the National Gallery of Victoria called Tedd Got suggested that the painting may have taken inspiration from 1872 book: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in which Charles Darwin argued "emotions have biological originals, and that animals have similar emotions to humans." It has also been interpreted as a commentary on the cruel society, represented by the crowd of opportunistic crows.