This lot belongs to a group of six tapestries that comprise the series known as La Noble Pastorale, first woven in the Beauvais workshop after the cartoons of François Boucher (1703-1770) under the directorship of André-Charlemagne Charron in 1755. The series was commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), director of the Beauvais manufactory and Boucher's personal friend, in 1754. One of Beauvais's most popular series and the last one supplied by Boucher, La Noble Pastorale was woven fifteen times between 1755 and 1778, well into the reign of Louis XVI and the emergence of the Neoclassical style. Between 1755 and 1774, the Royal court alone ordered six sets, five of which were destined for the apartments of Louis XV (the sixth was to be used by the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne).

The panels included La Fontaine d'Amour, Le Joueur de Flûte, Le Pècheur, Le Déjeuner, La Bergère, and the current lot: La Pipée aux Oiseaux, or The Bird Feeder (often called The Bird Catcher). This composition was the fourth scene of the series and its pendant was La Fontaine d'Amour. Boucher's painting of the Bird Catcher, on which the cartoon was based, dates from 1748 and is currently in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (obj. no. 71.PA.38). There are a number of surviving examples from La Noble Pastorale tapestries, although very few of them are complete. An example of La Pipée aux Oiseaux woven for Louis XV and displaying his royal coat-of-arms in the top border is now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (inv. no. 280). Another tapestry with this subject, but without the Royal provenance, is at the Art Institute of Chicago (ref. no. 1942.144).