This zinc full-length statue of a standing naked male youth holding a spear and with a hound looking up sitting by his left side, represents the Greek hunter Meleager, who had killed the Calydonian boar sent by the goddess Artemis to destroy the crops. In the 1850’s Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert acquired a series of zinc cast statues based on originals from the antique for the gardens at Osborne House, their summer residence in the Isle of Wight. The statues were cast by the Berlin founders M. Geiss, who exhibited a bronzed zinc cast of stags in the 1851 Great Exhibition in London that were purchased by Prince Albert. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert acquired eleven zinc statues from M Geiss for Osborne House and these included Urania, Euterpe, L’Adorant, Ganymede, Venus of Capua, Meleager, Bacchus, Venus de Medici, Ceres, Medea and Venus d’Arles. The statue was presented by Prince Albert to Queen Victoria as a Christmas gift in 1852.