Still Life with Swan and Game before a Country Estate

The setting for this large and imposing game piece is an imaginary formal garden similar to those associated with patrician estates being built in the Netherlands in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Jan Weenix has used a large plinth decorated with a relief sculpture as the backdrop for an array of game and fruit. Weenix's proficiency in rendering materials and textures is particularly evident in the feathers of the goose and the fur of the hare. This still life has distinct Christian connotations related to death and resurrection. The relief sculpture on the plinth represents the Holy Family, with the Christ Child asleep just below the rose, a flower symbolizing the Virgin’s sorrows. The calendula, too, carries associations with death (its Dutch name, dodenbloem, means "death flower"). The startled dove flying away from the goose relates symbolically to the release of the soul after death. In conceiving this iconography, Weenix probably followed the specific wishes of a patron.

Weenix, one of the finest and most celebrated Dutch game painters, was probably taught by his father, Jan Baptist Weenix (1621–1660/1661), who specialized in Italianate campagnas and harbor scenes. Weenix's works are distinguished from those of his father by their more elegant figures, subtler coloring, and refined brushwork. After 1680 Weenix specialized in elegant still lifes of dead game birds, flowers, and statuary, which he painted for the Amsterdam elite. From about 1702 to 1714, the artist served as court painter to the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm von der Pflaz in Düsseldorf.