The present model, entitled Perdrix was executed by Pompon in 1923 and exhibited at the Salon the following year. The original bronze is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Despite his long career, François Pompon (d.1933) did not receive real public recognition until late in life, when at the age of sixty-seven he exhibited his Ours blanc at the salon of 1922. His early works concentrated predominantly on the human form and it was not until 1900 that animals began to figure heavily in his oeuvre. With the turn of the century he began to develop his own characteristic style, that of smooth forms, liberated from detail and often evoking the sculpture of ancient Egypt.