Portrait of a Hunter

In 1704, at the court of Louis XIV, nothing marked a gentleman like the hunt. It was the king's favourite pastime and the daily theatre of the aristocracy, and to sit for a portrait in hunting dress was to claim a place in that world. Desportes, who spent his career on the animals and the chase the court adored, gave this sitter the same close attention he gave to game and hounds. Europe was deep in the War of the Spanish Succession that year, though the scene keeps only the calm of the hunt. Who the man was went unrecorded. What survives is the role he chose to be seen in, a hunter, fixed the year Desportes was making his name at Versailles.