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Lot Essay
Opperman believes that this group of four standing figures constitutes a subgroup in a larger suite of sixteen panels that Oudry painted for the Château de Voré; he regards these decorations as wholly autograph.
The figures are accompanied by various attributes which suggest that they were intended as Personifications which carry symbolic or allegorical meanings, though what such meanings might be is now unclear. Opperman follows Jean Vergnet-Ruiz in identifying the figures as representing Poetry (a woman combing her hair beneath a star, with Pegasus at her feet); Philosophy (a woman in white who holds a mask and stands beside an owl); Hunting (a hunter resting against his rifle, a dog at his feet); and Reverie (who takes the form of a gesturing footman). So encoded are Oudry's intentions that Opperman wonders whether their symbolism might be connected to an unknown secret society.
Stylistically, the group owes much to the decorative paintings and designs of Watteau, and it is reminiscent of the surviving fragments of Watteau's decorations for the hôtel de Nointel (circa 1707-8; private collection). Therefore, the suite should be dated to soon after Oudry's introduction to Fagon; that is, the mid-to-late 1720s.
The figures are accompanied by various attributes which suggest that they were intended as Personifications which carry symbolic or allegorical meanings, though what such meanings might be is now unclear. Opperman follows Jean Vergnet-Ruiz in identifying the figures as representing Poetry (a woman combing her hair beneath a star, with Pegasus at her feet); Philosophy (a woman in white who holds a mask and stands beside an owl); Hunting (a hunter resting against his rifle, a dog at his feet); and Reverie (who takes the form of a gesturing footman). So encoded are Oudry's intentions that Opperman wonders whether their symbolism might be connected to an unknown secret society.
Stylistically, the group owes much to the decorative paintings and designs of Watteau, and it is reminiscent of the surviving fragments of Watteau's decorations for the hôtel de Nointel (circa 1707-8; private collection). Therefore, the suite should be dated to soon after Oudry's introduction to Fagon; that is, the mid-to-late 1720s.