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Lot Essay
Oudry trained under his father, a master painter in the Académie de Saint-Luc, but it was his five years of study with the Franco-Flemish portraitist and still life painter Nicolas de Largillierre which ended in 1712 that determined his early career. Though Oudry worked principally as a portrait painter in Largillierre's manner early on, around the time his studies ended he began to undertake a number of small-scale still lifes that included living and dead animals and signaled the genre through which he would achieve his greatest and most enduring fame.
The present painting was executed at the height of Oudry's artistic success. Having been made an assistant professor at the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1714, professor in 1717 and a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1719 (where he would become a professor in 1743), Oudry was appointed Painter-in-Ordinary of the Royal Hunt by Louis XV and, in 1734, was named director of the Beauvais tapestry manufactory. His success at Beauvais led to an additional appointment as inspector at the Gobelins tapestry manufactory in 1736. Oudry's success enabled him to command especially high prices. Writing in the year Oudry executed this work, Carl Harleman (1700-1753), Intendant des Batiments of the Swedish Crown, wrote to Count Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695-1770) complaining about the prices Oudry charged: 'Oudry overwhelms me with letters...I preach to him to keep lowering his prices and perhaps one day he will meet us where we await him' (quoted in H. Opperman, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, I, New York, 1977, pp. 83-84).
Oudry's close contact with the French crown is intimated here through the carved satyr's head on the side of the urn. The motif derives from a series of urns commissioned by Louis XIV for the gardens at Versailles based on designs by the likes of the painter Charles le Brun (1619-1690) and the landscape architect and principal gardener to the King, André Le Nôtre (1613-1700). A similar motif recurs in a number of Oudry's works, including the artist's Still life with dead game and a silver tureen on a Turkish carpet of 1738 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm).
The present painting was executed at the height of Oudry's artistic success. Having been made an assistant professor at the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1714, professor in 1717 and a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1719 (where he would become a professor in 1743), Oudry was appointed Painter-in-Ordinary of the Royal Hunt by Louis XV and, in 1734, was named director of the Beauvais tapestry manufactory. His success at Beauvais led to an additional appointment as inspector at the Gobelins tapestry manufactory in 1736. Oudry's success enabled him to command especially high prices. Writing in the year Oudry executed this work, Carl Harleman (1700-1753), Intendant des Batiments of the Swedish Crown, wrote to Count Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695-1770) complaining about the prices Oudry charged: 'Oudry overwhelms me with letters...I preach to him to keep lowering his prices and perhaps one day he will meet us where we await him' (quoted in H. Opperman, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, I, New York, 1977, pp. 83-84).
Oudry's close contact with the French crown is intimated here through the carved satyr's head on the side of the urn. The motif derives from a series of urns commissioned by Louis XIV for the gardens at Versailles based on designs by the likes of the painter Charles le Brun (1619-1690) and the landscape architect and principal gardener to the King, André Le Nôtre (1613-1700). A similar motif recurs in a number of Oudry's works, including the artist's Still life with dead game and a silver tureen on a Turkish carpet of 1738 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm).