A spaniel with a dead hare in a landscape, with parrots and a monkey in a tree

Few details are known of Bogdani's early life or artistic training prior to his arrival in London in 1688. Within a few years, however, he had earned a reputation at Court and among the leading aristocratic patrons of the day as a fine painter of still lifes and birds. One of his earliest commissions was for a set of flowerpieces for Queen Mary's Looking-glass Closet in the Thames Gallery at Hampton Court (1694). Queen Anne also became a patron and it may have been through her that Bogdani met Admiral George Churchill (1654-1710), the younger brother of John, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Churchill had recently taken possession of the Lodge in the Little Park at Windsor and had created an aviary full of unusual birds. It was here that Bogdani studied the exotic creatures that were to appear in his pictures. Churchill acquired a great many of these paintings, and after his death Queen Anne bought a number of them to hang at Hampton Court.

The birds in this painting, a Blue-fronted Amazon (Amazona aestiva), a Jandaya Conure (Aratinga jandaya) and a Great Tit (Parus major), may have been inspired by those that Bogdani saw in Churchill's aviary at Windsor. The same Blue-fronted Amazon reappears in the largest known painting by Bogdani (private collection, Scotland). The subject matter is somewhat unusual for the artist in that it combines two distinct themes, exotic birds and dead game. Bogdani's description of his working practices in 1691 suggest that he usually divided his subjects rigorously: '[I] paint in the Spring flowers & in the Somer flowers & Fruits when they are out of Lobsters and oyster pieces, in the Winter pieces of Fowell & plate' (MS, Chatsworth, Derbyshire).