Alexandre-François Desportes is known mostly for his still lifes and hunting scenes; he was elected to France’s Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture as an animal painter. He got many royal commissions, mainly from Louis XIV and Louis XV. Despite the wealth of detail of the rabbits, this may be an unfinished study used by his son and assistant Claude-François Desportes. It also used to be thought that the background was the work of another artist.