This small, sketch-like painting is executed in the creamy paint handling characteristic of Boucher's oil sketches from the 1730s. The composition has long been known through this sketch and two nearly identical versions of similar dimensions, all of which appear to be autograph. The others include a canvas long attributed to Oudry in the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris, and a version in a private collection that was exhibited in a Boucher retrospective at Galerie Cailleux in Paris in 1964 (no. 13). In 2013, a fourth, slightly larger example was preempted by the Musée du Louvre shortly before its sale at auction in Paris. All four versions are similar in style and handling to other sketches by Boucher of the early and mid-1730s, including the oil studies for The Leopard Hunt (Private collection, Paris),The Lion Hunt (Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne) and a Turkish harem scene that was formerly attributed to Le Prince, for which there is a signed Boucher compositional drawing in the Albertina, Vienna. Although Laing (op.cit., 1987) had questioned the attribution to Boucher for the first three paintings, the indisputable authenticity of the Albertina sheet persuaded him to reverse his opinion on them, which he now accepts fully as by Boucher's hand (see Salmon, op. cit., and Laing, op. cit., 2003-2004). After first-hand inspection of the present painting in 2008, Laing confirmed the attribution to Boucher, which he reiterated in written correspondence, 9 December 2011.
We are grateful to Alastair Laing for his assistance with the preparation of this catalogue entry.