Diana and her Companions Hunting Wild Boar

Louis de Boullogne (1654-1733) was from a family of successful artists active in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. After study in Rome, he was accepted into the Académie Royale and spent his career providing religious and mythological paintings to Royal palaces and churches in and around Paris. In recognition of these achievements, he was ennobled in 1724 and named Premier Peintre du Roi in 1725.
This vigorous sketch is a première pensée, or first idea, for an overdoor commissioned by Louis-Alexandre, comte de Toulouse for the Cabinet du Roi at the château de Rambouillet. The painting, today in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Tours, depicts Diana and her nymphs hunting a wild boar. A second, more detailed but also drier, compositional study is in the Musée du Louvre. In this freely executed sketch, the artist uses black and white chalk, not only to lay in the major elements of the composition, but also to consider the overall distribution of light and dark.