Soutine’s dealer, Léopold Zborowski, encouraged his artists to paint still lifes because they were popular and sold well, but this hanging turkey is not the typical picture of dead game that collectors traditionally favored for their dining rooms. Instead, this fowl, hanging in a poultry market, seems to arouse thoughts about the passage between life and death, as well as the dependence of humankind on the death of animals for nourishment.