Jean-Baptiste PATER (Valenciennes 1695 - Paris 1736) A pair: studies for the lion hunt or the Chinese hunt Sanguine and estompe. Both are numbered lower right "404" and "405". Returned to the rectangle, cut out and reinstated (important strips of paper added on the edges). (Small stains). 21.5 x 13 cm each. Provenance: Camille Groult (1837-1908), then his son Jean (1868-1951); his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, December 19, 1941, two hangings, no. 73 and no. 74. Bibliography: X. Salmon, exhibition catalog: Versailles, les Chasses exotiques de Louis XV, Musée de Picardie, Amiens-musée national du Château de Versailles, n° 15-16, reproduced. Our two studies are preparatory to the painting The Chinese Hunt dated 1737 and kept in the Amiens museum: The king of China on his throne armed with his saber or cutlass and the rider with a lance. During the reign of Louis XV, a real "culture of elsewhere" developed in the wake of the multiplication of exchanges with Asia. It was in this context of the emergence of a new taste that exotic hunts were commissioned from official artists. Indeed, the representation of this traditional practice is now combined with fantasized oriental figures. These two sanguine studies of Chinese men by Jean-Baptiste Pater are eloquent examples of this broadening of the iconographic repertoire and of the mutation of the trends visible through the royal commission.