Jean-baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) Monumental Canvas Late 18th Century

Important late 18th century painting (1 m 67 X 1 m 12) oil painting on canvas attributed to the workshop of Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) presenting a large bucolic composition featuring a Breton spaniel emerging from the right towards a trophy of hunting consisting of a green collar, a pheasant, a thrush and a partridge appearing in the center near a fruit basket in front of a surrounding wall. Period frame in gilded wood. Good condition. Biographical reminder: The French painter and engraver Jean-Baptiste Oudry is especially famous for his paintings of hunting dogs, his animal still lifes and his exotic animals. Son of Jacques Oudry, master painter and art dealer on Pont Notre-Dame, and his wife, Nicole Papillon, who belonged to the family of the engraver Jean-Baptiste-Michel Papillon, Jean-Baptiste Oudry first studied at the Ecole de la Maîtrise de Saint-Luc, of which his father was director. He was then placed with the great painter of King Nicolas de Largillière, with whom he soon became a friend. After having painted a few religious subjects and a portrait of Tsar Peter I, he met the Marquis de Beringhen, first squire to the king. This meeting is decisive because the marquis orders many works from Oudry for the king. From then on, Oudry was granted a studio in the court of the princes at the Tuileries and accommodation in the Palais du Louvre where he formed a renowned cabinet. Oudry followed the royal hunts and made frequent studies in the forest of Compiègne. The intendant of finances, Fagon, took him into his service and charged him with re-establishing the manufactory of Beauvais, which had fallen into decline. Oudry joined Boucher and Natoire to execute the copying of the paintings. He was also entrusted with the inspection of the Gobelins factory, where the tapestries of the king's hunts were made from his paintings. Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted portraits, history, hunts, landscapes, animals, fruits, flowers; he imitated bas-reliefs; he did pastel, decoration; it also etched. We owe him two lectures that were read at the Academy, “On the way to study color by comparing objects with each other” and “On the care that one must take while painting”. Oudry left a large number of drawings, the best known of which are the 275 drawings that were used in the edition known as the Farmers General of La Fontaine's Fables, engraved by Charles-Nicolas Cochin. He is also the author of an Almanach de rébus published in 1716.