A LOUIS XV BEAUVAIS VERDURE TAPESTRY

AFTER JEAN-BAPTISTE OUDRY

Details

A LOUIS XV BEAUVAIS VERDURE TAPESTRY
After Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Woven in wools and silks, depicting a scene from La Fontaine's Fables with a river and a bridge with monkeys playing on it, and with fish, snakes and a cormoran in the water, with dogs playing nearby and a bridge and houses in the background, on the left a rustic wall entwined within a vine, signed on the lower left 'J B Oudry 1730' , within a foliate brown and yellow border, reweaving and patching, areas of painted colour enhancement, previously cut and rejoined to the right side
9 ft. 11 in. x 11 ft. 1½ in. (302 cm. x 339 cm.)

Provenance

Sold anonymously, Sotheby's Monaco, 26 November 1979, lot 300.

Lot Essay

This tapestry forms part of a series depicting the fables of La Fontaine after Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755). The series was first woven at Beauvais in 1736: the date of the inscription on this tapestry is therefore probably irrelevant for the actual date of weaving. The subject consisted of five panels, this one being described as Le Renard et les raisins et les poissons et le cormoran. The series was woven sixteen times, the majority in the 1740s and 1750s, until 1777. It was the last of six tapestry series that Oudry supplied to Beauvais during his directorship of the manufacture between 1726 and 1736.

Two panels from the series with the arms of France and Navarre were sold anonymously at Sotheby's Monaco, 8 February 1981, lots 308 and 309. A further panel woven after 1753 and bearing the signature of André-Charlemagne Charron, is illustrated in D. and P. Chevalier and P.-F. Bertrand, Les Tapisseries d'Aubusson et de Felletin, Lausanne, 1988, p. 151.

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