A gentleman wearing a tricorn hat on horseback in a landscape: A study for an equestrian portrait of King Louis XV

Related to the portrait of King Louis XV commissioned in 1723 by the Surintendance des Bâtiments from Jean-Baptiste Van Loo (1684-1745) and Charles Parrocel. The picture was in the collection of the Brionne-Vaudémont family before the French Revolution and was confiscated in 1795. It is now at Versailles, C. Constans, Musée National du Château de Versailles, Les Peintures, Paris, 1995, II, no. 5063. The portrait itself was executed by Van Loo and the horse and landscape left to Parrocel. The posture of the horse and the landscape are unchanged in the picture, although the position of the right arm of the model in the picture is lightly indicated in the drawing.
Four versions of the portrait were painted: one for Charles de Lorraine, one for Chantilly, another for the King and the last for Simon-Henri Thomassin to be engraved.