Jan Weenix, 'A Deerhound with Dead Game and Implements of the Chase', 1708

A fiery sunset sets the atmosphere for this powerful scene. On the left, a stag and a heron lie on the ground, the soft eye of the stag seeming to meet ours, drawing us into the picture. A blood-red poppy leans down over the animal’s flank, possibly as a symbol of death, but also to enliven the many browns and greys in this corner of the picture. Overhead a rifle, horn and two hares hang from the branches of the tree, and a dead branch seems to echo the antlers of the stag below. More hunting equipment and a cloak seemed to have been hastily dumped on the ground on the right.

A powerful hound brings life into this picture – surrounded by dead creatures, the dog pauses, head turned, alert to the call of a horn blown by the huntsman on the right. Light bounces off the belly of a hare, the flowing curve of the heron’s wing and the dog’s snout. The artist’s considerable skills in depicting texture are displayed in the furs and feathers of the various beasts – look at the delicate frills of white hair on the dog’s breast.

The close-up part of the painting acts as a frame to the rest of the picture, allowing us a hazy view of the vast landscape beyond, with a tower, a sparkling river and distant hills. A little closer to us, the hunt continues, with riders on horseback galloping downhill at the edge of the woods and hounds and men on foot closing in on a rearing stag.

The enormous painting is a celebration of hunting, which, in the early eighteenth century, was a way of sustaining a large household. It was also part of the training of boys for fighting in battle. For centuries it had been an aristocratic pursuit, though in the mid-seventeenth century a law had been passed granting wealthy and influential middle-class men the ability to apply for permission to hunt on their own land. But even by 1708, when Jan Weenix was court painter to Johann Wilhelm von der Pflaz, the German Elector Palatine in Düsseldorf, hunting was still largely confined to the aristocracy. The painting may have been commissioned by the Elector for his hunting lodge at Schloss Bensberg, just outside Cologne.