The Poacher is one of several landscape etchings that Paul Huet created in the 1830s. It combines the artist’s love of the French countryside with his interest in seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting (including the work of Jacob van Ruisdael, whose oil Landscape with Waterfall hangs nearby). Several differences between the preparatory drawing and the final print demonstrate how Huet experimented with the composition before he etched it. In particular, he seems to have struggled with the poses of the dog and the man, who appear much more alert in the etching. Presumably dissatisfied with what he had first drawn, Huet cut out part of the composition and pasted in another irregularly cut, smaller sheet.