Abstracts
This chapter is a case study of the extraordinary painting Life of a Hunter (1647–50) by the Dutch artist Paulus Potter. It boasts fourteen rectangular panels and multiple narratives. It depicts a hunter and his hounds who have been captured by their animal quarry. The hunter is tried by the animals, condemned to death and roasted alive. Life of a Hunter provokes several questions: What did Life of a Hunter mean to Potter and to the painting’s audience? When and where did its viewpoint of an ‘upside down’ animal trial originate? Was its moral message encouraged by the pro-animal sentiments expressed by Montaigne? As happened here, an image sometimes manages simultaneously to reflect prevailing cultural standards and to show the way to their erosion and possible transcendence.
It was in Plato (was it not?) that I came across the inspired adage, ‘Nature is but enigmatic poetry,’ as if to say that Nature is intended to exercise our ingenuity, like a painting veiled in mists and obscured by an infinite variety of wrong lights.
—Montaigne
This chapter is a revised version of an essay by Piers Beirne and Janine Janssen that originally appeared in Tijdschrift over Cultuur & Criminaliteit, 2014, 4(2): 15–28.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Chong (1988: 73–82).
- 3.
Antal (1962: 61–62).
- 4.
The English artist William Hogarth must have looked long and hard at the paintings of Egbert van Heemskerck the Elder (c.1634–1704), who had migrated from Holland to London around 1675, living close by the Hogarth family’s residence in West Smithfield during William’s childhood. See in particular van Heemskerck’s Quaker Meeting (c.1680) and his humorous satire Midnight Magistrate (c.1690). The latter depicts a trial in which a monkey magistrate presides in a case against a young female cat, while animals and hybrids observe. The presence of several hybrid constables and a concerned owl make the scene eerily reminiscent of Hogarth’s Cruelty in Perfection (1751). Hogarth also made extensive use of satyrs and other hybrids as instruments of political and social satire in eighteenth-century London (for example, in his South Sea Scheme, 1721); see further Beirne (2013: 142–46).
- 5.
See also De Allegorie van Prins Maurits en Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (c.1620), a painting by the brothers Herman and Cornelis Saftleven of Groenestijn castle near Baarn. In De Allegorie the Republican van Oldenbarnevelt, who appears as a wise owl, is chased from his castle by a mounted knight. This warrior is meant to be Maurits, Prince of Orange, which is quite a message in itself. Moreover, in the foreground are two crested fowls. These birds likely symbolize noblemen whom it was hoped would not intervene in the acute conflict over state governance (leading to van Oldebarnevelt’s death).
- 6.
- 7.
In his history of the emergence of the first fully fledged animal paintings, in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, Wolloch credits as one of the chief facilitating agents the growing habit of keeping exotic and domesticated animals, which may have led to ‘the observation of animals by artists and encouraged the interest in animal painting’ (2006: 173).
- 8.
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Buijsen and Dumas (1998: 227).
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For example, see Buijsen and Dumas (1998: 225).
- 11.
Arps-Aubert (1932: 11).
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See also Walsh et al. (1994: 129–30).
- 13.
In by far the most complete study of Potter, Amy Walsh has documented that ‘[t]he interest in the “savage” was particularly strong during the 1640s when, among other studies, Jan Maurits commissioned Albert Eeckhout to document with paintings the appearance and activities of the Indians of Brazil’ (1985: 334, n.88). See further Joppien (1979: 302ff).
- 14.
- 15.
Fuchs (1957: 5–8). It is worth mentioning that quite close by, in thrifty Flemish Ghent, after a judicial sentence of death had been passed on a cow: ‘she was slaughtered and her flesh sold as butcher’s meat, half of the proceeds of the sale being given as compensation to the injured party and the other half to the city treasury for distribution among the poor’ (Evans 1906: 169).
- 16.
The English physician John Keys reported that Henry VII once commanded some of his own hunting dogs to be hanged after they had assaulted ‘the valiaunt Lyon king of all beastes. An example for all subjectes worthy remembraunce, to admonishe them that it is no advantage to them to rebell against ye regiment of their ruler, but to keepe them within the limits of Loyaltie’ (Keys 1576: 26). This story is also recounted by Walsh, who comments: ‘the context of the application of the image is important for its interpretation. In this case our interpretation of the image as a statement against the military is indicated by Potter’s orientation toward peaceful means in his other contemporary works’ (1985: 408).
- 17.
Kemp (2007 : 103–04).
- 18.
Kemp (2007: 103–04).
- 19.
van Deursen (2010: 91–98).
- 20.
Houbraken (1753: 126).
- 21.
This assertion is made, for example, by Walsh et al. (1994: 133–35).
- 22.
This claim by the Hermitage is available at: http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/ (accessed 20 January 2014).
- 23.
- 24.
An interesting explanation for Reynard’s upside-down trial is given by the Reijnaart Association, available at: http://www.reynaertgenootschap.be. See further Varty (2003) and van Dievoet (1975).
- 25.
- 26.
Montaigne (1580: 187–88).
- 27.
Montaigne (1580: 191).
- 28.
Montaigne (1576: 16–17). For an excellent discussion of Montaigne’s essay ‘Of Cruelty’ see Erica Fudge (2006: 76–79). Against the rival interpretations of Quint (1998) and Hallie (1977), she insists that Montaigne ‘treats animals as moral patients, as beings that suffer … [and] he writes that “I do not see a chicken’s neck wrung, and I cannot bear to hear the scream of a hare in the teeth of my dogs”’ (Fudge 2006: 78). For the easy and unfair criticism that Potter failed to understand anything about the mental life of animals, see John Ruskin (1894: 275–76).
- 29.
Montaigne (1580, 10: 187).
- 30.
Ellerbroek (1948: 49–54).
- 31.
Smith (2007: 5–7).
- 32.
Kolfin and Rikken (2007: 253).
- 33.
Beirne (2009: 46).
- 34.
Calvin (1541–59, I, XVI, 1: 197–98).
- 35.
Calvin (n.d.: 294 and 329).
- 36.
Kemp (2007: 115). At the same time, we have to disagree with Amy Walsh’s awkward rejection of a Montaignean influence or theme in Potter’s Life of a Hunter. She both dismisses Kunzle’s (1978: 55ff) claim that ‘Potter’s painting reflects the artist’s humanitarian concern for the plight of the animals’ (1985: 407, n.114) and admits ‘Potter stresses … the stoic concepts of moderation, simplicity, and naturalness, all of which are found more perfectly in the animal’ (1985: 414).
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Beirne, P., Janssen, J. (2018). Hunting Worlds Turned Upside Down? Paulus Potter’s Life of a Hunter. In: Murdering Animals. Palgrave Studies in Green Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57468-8_3
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