Head of a leopard; and Head of a lion

These small panels by Jacques-Laurent Agasse display both the painter’s scientific approach to the natural world and his great sensitivity in rendering it, which together made him one of the most celebrated animal painters in England, arguably second only to his predecessor George Stubbs.

Born in Geneva to a patrician family of Huguenot origin, Agasse trained in his hometown before moving to Paris in 1786 to complete his artistic education in the studio of Jacques-Louis David, while also studying animal anatomy and dissection. The outbreak of the Revolution put an end to stay in France and he was back in Geneva in 1789. Having secured the patronage of George Pitt (1751-1828), later 2nd Baron Rivers of Stratfield Saye, Agasse settled in London in 1800, with the ambition of establishing himself as a prominent sporting painter.

In addition to horse and dog portraiture, in which Agasse specialised, the artist soon developed a keen interest in more exotic animals, then being imported to England for public display and study. Agasse’s fascination may have been sparked by his regular visits, from 1803 onwards, to the menagerie at the ‘Exeter ’Change’ on the Strand in London, and nurtured by the lifelong friendship he developed with the menagerie’s employee, and later owner, Edward Cross. Cross was a well-known importer and dealer in rare animals. He counted among his clients the extravagant, but also genuinely curious, Prince Regent, later King George IV. It was certainly Cross who helped Agasse secure, in 1827, the two royal commissions of The Nubian Giraffe and The White-Tailed Gnus (both Royal Collection). In the former, the giraffe, a gift from the Pasha of Egypt to King George IV, is shown newly arrived in England with two Arab keepers and Edward Cross, in attendance as supervisor of the Royal Menagerie at Sandpit Gate, Windsor Great Park.

Built on the site of the former London residence of the Earls of Exeter, from which it derived its name, the Exeter ’Change was erected in 1676 to shelter under its arcades small shops and markets. By 1773, its first floor was used as a menagerie, one of the first commercial attractions of the sort open to the English public. Purchased by Gilbert Pidcock in 1793, it passed on his death in 1810 to Stephen Polito, who renamed it the Royal Menagerie. Edward Cross was Polito’s son-in-law and took over the business in 1814. 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 which the National Gallery now stands. 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.

An entry from 1819 in the diary of Agasse’s cousin, Andre Gosse, provides a fascinating description of Agasse at the Royal menagerie: ‘Saturday 19 June … Went to see Agasse … went with him to Mr Cross’ menagerie where Agasse is drawing an orang-outang an enormous elephant, an enormous lion, a lioness and her whelps, a tiger, some tame hyenas’. It is likely that the present pictures were also the result of such drawing expeditions.

Over the course of his career Agasse painted several compositions with leopards and lions, including the two small canvases showing a Group of Whelps Bred between a Lion and a Tigress (1825) and Clouded Leopards (c. 1825), both now in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. On a grander scale, he executed the picture of Two Leopards in 1808 (private collection; see R. Loche and C. Sanger, Jacques-Laurent Agasse 1767-1849, exhibition catalogue, London, 1988, p. 98, no. 29. ) and the canvas commissioned by Edward Cross showing A lion and a lioness in a rocky valley, sold in these Rooms, 30 June 2016, lot 33, for £362,500.

While Agasse did occasionally paint on panel, these works are on an unusually small scale. This may explain why they were not included in the artist's record book or Livre de raison, an omission that has prompted some reservations regarding their attribution from Renee Loche (on the basis of images).