Raden Saleh, Javanese
“It’s a Lovely Anniversary Gift, Honey, But I Thought We’d Agreed We Weren’t Doing Pheasants This Year,” 1844
Oil on canvas
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Info, or links that point to more info, about the teaching artist can be found here, here, here, here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, and here, perhaps in addition to what's in his Wikipedia page (Google translated Indonesian Wikipedia page has more).
/// He’s confused when she calls him “barbarian,”
and refers to the pheasant as carrion.
After hunting all morning
he returned to her warning:
“I don’t eat dead things— I’m vegetarian.”
/// “Why so angry, my sweet turtle dove?
There’s no reason my partridge to shove.
Your brand new vegan phase
will be gone in two days.
With me then, you’ll again eat prey, Love.”
/// He’d been filled with Nimrodian pride
when he piled up his “kills” by her side.
When he gave her the bird,
she said, “Let’s have a word.
See that rabbit? We’re both why it died.”
/// But a pregnancy’s not in her plan.
She’s engaged to a rich older man
(who’ll be sure to confront her
if it looks like the hunter).
That it won’t, she will pray to Saint Anne.
/// When Ben offered this fresh meat to Ruth,
she refused it and said, “Here’s the truth.
I’ll eat fowl if we go
hunt with arrow and bow,
but, last week, birdshot shattered my tooth.”
/// “Other ways I could kill a bird dead
without aiming a gun at its head:
Catch the thing in a trap.
Wring its neck— a sharp snap.
So, when chewing, I won’t spit out lead.”
/// Later, Ben would feel humiliation
from indulging Ruth’s new avocation.
“Diana the huntress,”
attired in a sundress,
was an expert at wild game predation.