A dog over a dead boar.

This 1705 work at the National Museum in Warsaw — a dog standing over a dead boar — represents one of Weenix's most dramatically composed late-career game-pieces. The boar was the most dangerous quarry in the European hunting tradition, hunted by mounted or on-foot parties with spears and dogs, and its death represented a particular feat of courage and skill. Weenix's deployment of a dog guarding the fallen boar captures the aftermath of the hunt at its most intense moment: the animal still carries an air of contained ferocity even in death, while the dog asserts its role as the hunter's instrument. The National Museum in Warsaw holds an important collection of European old masters assembled over centuries of Polish noble collecting, and this Weenix represents the prestige attached to his name in Northern European collecting culture well into the eighteenth century and beyond.

The boar's bristled hide presents a very different textural challenge from the smooth fur of hares or the layered feathers of birds, and Weenix addresses it with short, stiff, directional strokes that convey the coarse roughness of the animal's coat. The dog's smoother, lighter-coloured coat is handled with longer, blended strokes that contrast with the boar's roughness. The background landscape is kept subdued to concentrate attention on this confrontation of living and dead animal.