This painting is based on Aesop's fable ‘The One-Eyed Doe.’

A doe who is blind in one eye seeks safety by standing near the edge of the sea and keeping her good eye on the land for hunters. She turns her injured eye towards the sea, where she doesn't expect danger. However, a boatman sees her and mortally wounds her. In her final moments, she cries out, "Alas, hard fate that I should receive my death wound from the side whence I expected no ill and be safe on that where I looked for most danger".