A trompe l'oeil with a magnifying glass, a Swallowtail, a hairstreaks and a red admiral butterfly, cartographic instruments, a hand-colored engraving of a Canadian Mourning Dove after François Nicolas Martinet, and a map of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea

Here, the unknown trompe l’oeil painter 'J. Barbat' offers a window into the world of an 18th-century naturalist. A magnifying glass rests atop a hand-colored print of a bird, while a map peeks out from behind it. Three pinned butterflies are rendered with scientific precision. A compass hangs from a nail, and a protractor and small pair of scissors rest—impossibly—on the edge of the painted surface. When this painting first appeared at auction in 1955, it was sold alongside its companion: a trompe l’oeil celebrating the arts, depicting brushes, a crayon holder, and colored prints, also signed by the enigmatic Barbat (current location unknown).

The hand-colored etching of a Tourterelle du Canada (Canadian mourning dove) can be identified as a sheet from Daubenton’s Planches enluminées, a series of more than 1,000 hand-colored illustrations created for the monumental Histoire naturelle (1749–1789). These illustrations were executed at the request of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), director of the Jardin du Roi and author of the multi-volume Histoire naturelle, and were overseen by the naturalist Edme-Louis Daubenton (1730–1785). The map visible behind the print of the dove, charts the Gulf of Mexico and the archipelago of the Antilles. It was drawn by Rigobert Bonne (1727–1795), one of the most important cartographers of the 18th century. Notably, the dove—a migratory species—travels from Canada to Mexico, wintering in warmer climates.