"Young Cheetah"

The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) wears in its youth a mantle of long grey hair along the nape, which disappears with age. Cheetah cubs suffer a very high mortality rate in their first years, mainly due to predators.

The background is a broad wash of burnt sienna with loose, almost abstract impasto — no setting, just a warm colour enveloping the animal. The seated cub has turned its head towards us: it is this direct gaze, half trusting, half serious, that justified the portrait. The work on the spots plays between the still-blurred coat of the young and the precision of the adult to come.