CIRCA 1790, MARKED WITH UNDERGLAZE BLUE CROSSED SWORDS ABOVE A STAR, ONE WITH PRESSNUMMER 39, THE OTHER WITH 44

The source of these designs are the engravings of Charles-Nicolas Cochin after the original drawings of Jean-Baptiste Oudry. Oudry, court painter to Louis XV and director of the Gobelin and Beauvais Tapestry works, began to make a series of drawings to illustrate La Fontaine's fables at the end of the 1720s. In 1751 the banker Montenault bought the drawings with their publication in mind, and as Oudry's originals were very free and difficult to translate into engravings, he commissioned Cochin to make further drawings from the originals which Cochin then engraved himself. The first three volumes of Fables choisies, mise en vers were published in Paris in 1755 and 1756 and the final volume was published in 1759.