During a trip to Holland in 1847, Constant Troyon studied the works of seventeenth-century painters such as Albert Cuyp and Paulus Potter. After he received the Legion d'honneur in 1849, he followed their example and devoted himself almost exclusively to animal painting. Like the Dutch masters that he so admired, this drawing in black chalk suggests an interest in direct, realist observation.
The animal appears in the same pose in one of Troyon's many portraits of livestock, a signed (but not dated) painting of a brown and white bull and a small dog (sold, Tokyo, Mainichi, 8 July 2022, lot 750).