Hunting Still Life in a Forest

This richly saturated watercolor displays the trophies of a recent hunt, which were acquired using the rifle in the left corner with a duck slung dramatically over it. Firearms were first used in hunting parties during the sixteenth century, and by the eighteenth there were many more types with greatly improved accuracy. The pile of game, which includes a hare and a heron, is framed by a statue of a figure on a plinth on what appears to be the end of a border wall. The statue, wall, and hunting trophies, though congruent with the lush landscape, are powerful symbols of humanity’s dominance over nature, a popular theme in Dutch eighteenth-century still lives.