Inside Walton Ford’s Brutal World of Man and Beast

READ MOREPARIS — Sometime during the summer of 1764 in the Haute-Loire region of France, a wolf-like creature attacked and killed as many as 200 peasants, often lone shepherdesses, savagely ripping out their throats. The animal proved impossible to trap; landowning nobles (the only ones with guns) failed to halt the killings and pacify the population. The animal soon acquired a name — “The Beast of Gévaudan” — and rampaged through the French psyche.

The dramatic narrative of Gévaudan served as inspiration for the artist Walton Ford’s exhibition here at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature), which runs until Feb. 14.

“Aristocratic hunting traditions gone wrong,” he said in an interview by phone from New York. “Brutal killings that went unanswered; a mysterious beast turned into cryptozoology — animal hysteria.” While Mr. Ford has previously exhibited in Europe, notably “Walton Ford: Bestiarium” at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof in 2010, the Paris show is the artist’s first-