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Lot Essay
Hal Opperman believes these lighthearted arabesques, which remain in their original frames, belong to a set of twelve decorative panels painted for Fagon sometime after 1724, when he and Oudry first became acquainted.
The subjects of the arabesques come from the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (first published between 1668 and 1693). The first tells the story of 'The Wolf and the Stork' (Book III, Fable IX): in it, a gluttonous wolf eats so quickly that a bone lodges in his throat, and he fears he will die. Luckily, a passing stork sees him choking, and she runs to the wolf to perform an emergency operation. Having removed the bone with her beak, she asks for remuneration. 'Remuneration!', cries the wolf in disbelief. 'My good woman, you must be joking. Don't be absurd. Isn't it enough that you managed to withdraw your neck unbitten from my jaw? Go away, ungrateful bird -- and never again come within reach of my paw!'
The other panel illustrates the tale of 'The Crow and the Fox' (Book I, Fable II). A crow, perched in a tree, holds in his beak a piece of cheese. A fox, attracted by the aroma, calls up to the bird, praising him with flattery about his looks and character. 'But how well can you sing?', he asks. 'At these words, the crow, beside himself with pleasure, opened his big mouth to show off, and dropped his treasure. The fox snapped it up in a trice, remarking: "My dear sir, learn the hard way that all flatterers live at the expense of those with a credulous ear to give -- a lesson cheap, surely, at the price of your lost cheese-slice". Mortified and confused, the crow vowed (rather late in the day) never again to be so abused'.
Oudry seems to have been attracted to La Fontaine's sly tales of hard-scrabble wisdom: in addition to the paintings he made for the ensemble at Voré, he drew -- between 1729 and 1734 -- a complete set of 275 illustrations for a de luxe edition of the Fables (published in 1755), and designed a tapestry series of four hangings based on the Fables for Beauvais (woven in 1736). It seems likely that Oudry would have made the paintings for Voré while La Fontaine was much on his mind; that is, in the late 1720s and early 1730s, when he set to working on the illustrations. This dating accords with the style of the paintings as well, in which the influence of the white- ground 'grotesques' of Gillot, Watteau and Claude III Audran (Oudry's master and occasional collaborator) are strongly felt; by the mid-1730s, the fashion for ornamental painting of this type was already on the wane. Opperman suggests the possibility that Oudry executed these panels partly with the aid of workshop assistants, as was standard practice in ornamental painting of the period; undoubtedly, the master painted the animals himself.
The subjects of the arabesques come from the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (first published between 1668 and 1693). The first tells the story of 'The Wolf and the Stork' (Book III, Fable IX): in it, a gluttonous wolf eats so quickly that a bone lodges in his throat, and he fears he will die. Luckily, a passing stork sees him choking, and she runs to the wolf to perform an emergency operation. Having removed the bone with her beak, she asks for remuneration. 'Remuneration!', cries the wolf in disbelief. 'My good woman, you must be joking. Don't be absurd. Isn't it enough that you managed to withdraw your neck unbitten from my jaw? Go away, ungrateful bird -- and never again come within reach of my paw!'
The other panel illustrates the tale of 'The Crow and the Fox' (Book I, Fable II). A crow, perched in a tree, holds in his beak a piece of cheese. A fox, attracted by the aroma, calls up to the bird, praising him with flattery about his looks and character. 'But how well can you sing?', he asks. 'At these words, the crow, beside himself with pleasure, opened his big mouth to show off, and dropped his treasure. The fox snapped it up in a trice, remarking: "My dear sir, learn the hard way that all flatterers live at the expense of those with a credulous ear to give -- a lesson cheap, surely, at the price of your lost cheese-slice". Mortified and confused, the crow vowed (rather late in the day) never again to be so abused'.
Oudry seems to have been attracted to La Fontaine's sly tales of hard-scrabble wisdom: in addition to the paintings he made for the ensemble at Voré, he drew -- between 1729 and 1734 -- a complete set of 275 illustrations for a de luxe edition of the Fables (published in 1755), and designed a tapestry series of four hangings based on the Fables for Beauvais (woven in 1736). It seems likely that Oudry would have made the paintings for Voré while La Fontaine was much on his mind; that is, in the late 1720s and early 1730s, when he set to working on the illustrations. This dating accords with the style of the paintings as well, in which the influence of the white- ground 'grotesques' of Gillot, Watteau and Claude III Audran (Oudry's master and occasional collaborator) are strongly felt; by the mid-1730s, the fashion for ornamental painting of this type was already on the wane. Opperman suggests the possibility that Oudry executed these panels partly with the aid of workshop assistants, as was standard practice in ornamental painting of the period; undoubtedly, the master painted the animals himself.