A river landscape with sportsman shooting at a popinjay on the bank

Le Prince was famous in his own time for his popular and picturesque depictions of day-to-day life in Russia, known as 'russeries'. The present painting can be situated in a series of works from the final years of Le Prince's career that are painted very much in the 17th-century Dutch style. Compare, for example, the pair of landscapes (also on panel) in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (inv. nos. 996 and 1241); a landscape with Cailleux, Paris in 1959; a landscape with Mercier and Duchemin, Paris, June 1997, no. 2; and another landscape sold at Christie's, New York, 25 May 1999, lot 65 ($25,300).
In a French neoclassical frame stamped 'Pepin'.