Leopard Hunt

In this refined red chalk drawing, a hunting party clashes with a pack of leopards before a background of palm trees. An orb nestled beside a fallen leopard in the foreground refers to a European legend associated with tiger hunting in faraway lands: a glass ball was supposedly used to confuse the tigress into mistaking her own reflection for one of her cubs. Flipart copied this composition from an oil painting, The Leopard Hunt (1736; Musée de Picardie, Amiens) by François Boucher, in preparation for a published print. Finely incised squaring lines cover the surface of the sheet; Flipart used this grid to scale down the painting’s design and to transfer it onto the copper engraving plate. The original painting belonged to a series of nine scenes, known as the “exotic hunts,” commissioned for Louis XV’s private apartments at Versailles.