Engravings

Folle and Mitte, dogs of Louis XIV, at the stop in front of two pheasants in a wooded environment on a village background.

François Desportes is perhaps the first French painter to have taken hunting and animals as the main subjects of his paintings. In 1695 he became a court painter for King Jean Sobieski of Poland, who died in 1696. It was the same year that he returned to France and devoted himself to the reproduction of hunting scenes. Appointed by Louis XIV as a painter of his venery, he was received as an Academician in 1699 and then as an advisor to the Academy in 1704. F. Desportes himself participated in the hunts and went to the kennel to draw the most beautiful dogs of Louis XIV before submitting his work to the king.