Jacques-Laurent Agasse, Swiss-born of Huguenot parentage, moved to London from Lausanne in 1800 and setttled with his fellow Swiss artist and animal painter John James Chalon. In addition to horse-portraiture, for which Agasse had shown an early aptitude, from 1803 onwards he developed an interest in more exotic animals, then being imported into England for public display and study. From about this time Agasse became a regular visitor to the menagerie at the Exeter 'Change in the Strand. He first records a visit in his MS Record Book in June 1803 when he saw 'a Curious african animal of the Antelope tribe 3g. size'. In 1810, upon the death of the proprietor Gilbert Pidcock, the menagerie was bought at auction by Stephen Polito. In 1817 Polito handed over the business to his son-in-law, Edward Cross, who was to remain in charge of the menagerie in its various guises and locations for another 27 years. Unfortunately very little is known about the origins of Edward Cross, although it is assumed that he had started to work at the Menagerie under Pidcock. It has also been suggested that he was connected with the Liverpool family of the same name who were well-known animal dealers and importers. At some point between 1810 and 1817 he married Miss Polito whose first name is not known. As an employee and eventual proprietor, Cross was well acquainted with Agasse and the artist's curiosity and scientific naturalism was the starting point for their lifelong friendship. The present pictures are recorded in the Record Book in 1838: 'Forgot a P. of Mr. Cr[oss], Size of Life, with hands - Kitcat' and 'P. of Mrs. Cross, Size of Life with hands - Kitcat'. The artist had recorded painting the Crosses twice before, in 1819 and 1820, but the present whereabouts of these pictures is unknown. That Agasse should have painted the Crosses at all attests to their close friendship, as his portraiture was exclusively reserved for individuals in his immediate circle, mostly drawn from the expatriate Swiss Huguenot community. In addition to the Crosses he painted their friend Miss Woolf in 1823 and is known to have sold his works to William Herring, a cousin of Mrs. Cross and also a menagerie owner.

As proprietor of the highly popular Menagerie and a leading importer of exotic animals, Edward Cross was well placed to act as supplier of exotic animals to the extravagant but also genuinely curious Prince Regent (later King George IV). It was this royal connection which helped Cross secure, in 1827, the commission for The Nubian Giraffe and The White-Tailed Gnus (both in the Royal Collection). In the former the giraffe, a gift from Mehmet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, to King George IV, is shown newly arrived with two arab keepers and Edward Cross, in attendance as supervisor of the Royal Menagerie at Sandpit Gate, Windsor Great Park.

In 1829 the Exeter 'Change buildings were demolished and Cross and his ever-growing collection of animals were forced to move to a site on what is now the National Gallery. They remained there for only two years, as in 1831 building work started on the newly founded National Gallery. In the same year Cross purchased a thirteen acre site in Kennington, south of the River Thames, and founded the Surrey Literary, Scientific and Zoological Institution and Garden, offering the Institution his animals for the sum of #3,500. The London Zoological Society (forerunner of the present London Zoo) had already been founded in 1826 but it was generally acknowledged, much to their chagrin, that Cross's enterprise was more innovative and advanced in the study and welfare of its animals. The centrepiece of the garden was a circular glass building, three hundred feet in diameter, which housed the lions, tigers, leopards and other big mammals in spacious compartments in the centre, with tropical birds in cages on the outside edge of the building.

Edward Cross is portrayed holding a lion cub inside his revolutionary glass-domed animal house, which anticipates Sir Joseph Paxton's work for the Great Exhibition in 1851 and at Chatsworth. The animals were presented not for public amusement but for education, the official Companion to the Royal Zoological Gardens, Surrey, including detailed information about the animals' geographical distribution, habitat, diet, longevity and social behaviour. Not surprisingly Cross had the patronage of figures as prominent as Queen Adelaide, wife of King William IV (who unlike his predecessor was not interested in exotic animals, regarding them as an extravagance), the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duke of Devonshire.

Cross's work as a zoologist was in many ways in advance of that of his contemporaries and for several years his menagerie was regarded as a serious rival to the London Zoo in Regent's Park. However, with his retirement in 1844 the Gardens entered a period of neglect and were finally sold off in 1855 after his death. Cross shared with the artist an interest in exotic animals, his menagerie providing a rich source for more than seventy-five pictures over a period of three decades, ranging from 'a curious small kind of slouth for Mr. Cr[oss]' to the Two Leopards sold in these Rooms, 15 July 1988, lot 35 (for #3,500,000).

We are grateful to Mr. John Edwards of the Zoological Society of London for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot