"Romi"

Wildlife artist Stéphane Alsac presents here his latest painting: the portrait of the celebrated female leopard of the Masai Mara — Romi.

My first encounter with Romi goes back several years. Having observed a good number of leopards, I must say she exerts a certain fascination — and clearly not only on me. Indeed, each leopard is different, and Romi is one of those panthers who have a certain indefinable 'something more'. She is beautiful.

This time, it has now been several months since Romi disappeared. It is not the first time she has remained so impossible to find, and I think I am going to have to leave Kenya without having seen her. After several days of fruitless searching across her vast territory, my guide announces that she has finally reappeared and left a kill in a tree on the edge of a river.

She is sure to return in the evening to take a few morsels from her prey. We take up position and after an hour's wait, as though she had prepared her entrance, she appears. I am breathless; I know this will last only a few minutes, so I shoot: she poses, stretches against the tree, takes flight, then disappears into the foliage.

In the end, it is my son who got the finest image — the one I will use for this painting, a tribute to the Queen of Leopards.