This statue was created by sculptor Charles-Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720), and was installed in the new Tuileries garden (along the facade of the Royal Palace), which was devoted to the theme of hunting. In 1858 Charles Nègre proposed to the French Emperor a publication devoted to a pictorial history of art, which was to be illustrated with his newly developed heliogravure process. Although the proposal was not accepted, he was commissioned to produce a series of prints of the statues in the Tuileries. Nègre began photographing a year later, creating 30 exquisite photographs.
This particular photograph, in which the negative has been flipped by Nègre, is from that series. Curator Françoise Heilbrun, Musée d'Orsay, notes that 15 prints remained with Nègre's family. The majority of photographs were acquired by André and Marie-Thérèse Jammes, and subsequently sold at the 2002 Paris auction of their collection.
