L'enfant à la cage is after the marble original by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle acquired by the Louvre in 1884. Dated 1749 and exhibited at the Salon of 1750, the little boy was a portrait of the only son of the financier Jean Paris de Montmartel. Montmartel's sculpture, (shown in an engraving on a lavish ormolu base in J-R. Gaborit, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, Paris, 1985, p.50) was bought back by Pigalle at the Marquis de Brunoy's sale in 1776. L'enfant à l'oiseau et à la pomme was conceived as the pendant to L'enfant à la cage (see the pair sold in these Rooms, 22 June 1989, lot 46).
Thomire made a series of casts in 1823 and between 1848 and 1853 other series were issued.

The model for L'enfant à løiseau, although not recorded in the catalogue raisonné is also attributed to Pigalle. This is confirmed by the Sevres manufactory index:- no. 261 Date 1777 Enfant à l'oiseau (L) Figure par Pigalle, while L'enfant à la cage was also produced by Sevres in 1777 (see E. Bourgeois, Le Bisciut de Sevres, vol. 1, figs. 217 & 261).