William WOOLLETT after Jean Baptiste Pillement

La Chasse au Sanglier

26 x 21.5 inches

This wonderful scene depicts the final stages of a wild boar hunt through the forest. Amidst the most extraordinary forest an aristocratic group of men and women run the boar to ground with horses, hounds and rifles. Pillement (1728-1808) was a famous French landscape painter and designer whose fame derived largely from the engravings taken after his work. He was based in Paris but obtained imperial patronage throughout Europe including Marie Antoinette for whom he worked at le Petit Trianon in the 1780s before the fateful Revolution of 1789. Pierre Canot (1710-1777) was a French line engraver and etcher of topographical and sporting subjects after his contemporaries. He was born in Paris but moved to England in 1740 where he worked in London until his death in 1777. His talent as an engraver was much admired and he was elected to the Royal Academy in 1770.