SERIES of exacting patrons, which ranged from members of the court of Jan Sobieski in Poland to Louis XIV—who appointed him his official painter of hunting scenes—and Louis XV in France, presumably sharpened French painter François Desportes’s eye for detail. In the collection of the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres is a sketch in oils by Desportes of a plump velvet cushion. A preparatory study for a canine portrait, it lacks its four-legged sitter, but the picture’s interest lies in the details of the cushion itself: a rectangle of garnet-coloured velvet bound with embroidered gold braid and, on each corner, a fat gold tassel
