A Hunter's Bag on a Terrace

In 1674 William of Orange, stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and later king of England, bought the estate of Soestdijk in the province of Utrecht and turned the house into a hunting lodge. Around 1678 Melchior d'Hondecoeter painted a pair of tall canvases for it, and this is one of them. The day's bag lies on the steps of a terrace, a hare, a heron, a snipe and a pheasant among other birds, and a hunting horn hangs on the wall. On the balustrade above stand two peacocks and a vase holding an orange tree, which the Rijksmuseum reads as a sign for William himself, the prince of Orange.

The peacocks belong to a story that runs across both canvases. In an old fable the birds wanted to make the peacock their king for its beauty, and the companion picture, which hung facing this one at Soestdijk, shows the magpie that objected. Both canvases are more than two metres tall and arched at the top.