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Lot Essay
This monumental, opulent depiction of the trophies of the hunt ranks among the masterpieces of 18th-century still life painting and is one of the finest achievements of Oudry's career. The painting, which was conceived on an enormous scale (measuring more than 8½ feet in height and 6 feet wide), is one of the artist's most extravagant and overstuffed rococo creations, executed with energy and bravura, but also with a dazzling precision: the delicate and carefully differentiated touch of Oudry's brush is masterly -- evident in the shimmer of the silverwork on the rifle, the downy whiteness of the swan's feathers, and the sharp, multicolored bristles of the boar's fur -- and would only rarely be surpassed. While all the elements of the composition are rendered with a naturalist's eye for authenticity, and would have been based on extensive preparatory studies, they are artfully arranged in a setting that fully exploits the decorative potential of architectural arabesques, the natural curves of birds' necks, and the asymetricality of tree branches. One of the originators in the 1720s of the genre pittoresque, Oudry became a master of the piquant effects of trompe-l'oeil design, brilliant coloring and theatrical lighting that so enliven the present painting, itself a magnificent exemplar of the new genre.
Like all of Oudry's paintings for Fagon, the Retour de Chasse cannot be dated precisely, but was probably made sometime between the mid-1720s and the late 1730s; Vergnet-Ruiz noted (in 1930) that a document in the now-missing archives of Voré attested to the presence of the painting in the château in 1741. As Opperman records, an unsigned and undated autograph variant of the Voré Retour de Chasse is among the four paintings by Oudry presently in the collection of the Comte de Sade (Opperman, 1977, no. P422), whose residence, the Château de Condé-en-Brie, was from 1719 the property of the celebrated collectors Jean-Franois de Leriget de La Faye and his mistress the Comtesse de Verrue. The present painting differs from the version in Condé-en-Brie principally in its substitution of a rifle, powder horn and pouch of musket balls in the lower left for a brace of dead birds.
Like all of Oudry's paintings for Fagon, the Retour de Chasse cannot be dated precisely, but was probably made sometime between the mid-1720s and the late 1730s; Vergnet-Ruiz noted (in 1930) that a document in the now-missing archives of Voré attested to the presence of the painting in the château in 1741. As Opperman records, an unsigned and undated autograph variant of the Voré Retour de Chasse is among the four paintings by Oudry presently in the collection of the Comte de Sade (Opperman, 1977, no. P422), whose residence, the Château de Condé-en-Brie, was from 1719 the property of the celebrated collectors Jean-Franois de Leriget de La Faye and his mistress the Comtesse de Verrue. The present painting differs from the version in Condé-en-Brie principally in its substitution of a rifle, powder horn and pouch of musket balls in the lower left for a brace of dead birds.