A proud Dalmatian is sitting on a terrace with her six puppies around her. Two of the puppies are suckling, two others are caught up in an playful brawl, the fifth appears exhausted and the sixth is eagerly searching for a teat by its mother’s left hind leg. A landscape featuring a lake forms the background of this scene, and on the other side of the lake lies a ruin among the trees and hills. Both the balanced triangular composition and the warm-hearted subject creates a harmonious, calm and comfortable atmosphere, further reinforced by the gentle lighting of the afternoon sun. The Arcadian landscape in the background was not initially part of the composition, but was only added later in a style that appears heavily influenced by the contemporary Golden Age painter Aelbert Cuyp’s evening landscape paintings. Pieter van der Hulst enjoyed depicting dogs in connection with still life pictures with hunting motifs. However, in this painting the dogs are featured in the central position of the composition.
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