Jager wordt opgeschrikt tijdens het doen van zijn behoefte 1831 - 1846

François Grenier captured this scene with watercolor and gouache. At its center, we find a hunter, caught in an exposed and vulnerable moment as he is interrupted while relieving himself, a disruption humorously titled "The Surprise." The dog, positioned between us and the hunter, serves as the guardian of this intimate moment, its alert posture echoing the hunter's sudden tension. This guardian-like role harkens back to ancient beliefs where animals were seen as intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds, protectors of sacred or vulnerable spaces. Think of Cerberus, the multi-headed dog guarding the gates of the Underworld. Here, however, Grenier playfully inverts the sacred with the profane, the heroic with the mundane. The hunter, traditionally a figure of power and control, is rendered comically helpless, a universal symbol of the precariousness of human dignity. The dog's vigilance, therefore, is not for a mythical realm, but to guard against the embarrassment of public exposure.