Jean-Baptiste Oudry

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Jean-Baptiste Oudry, by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (French pronunciation:

engraver, and tapestry
designer. He is particularly well known for his naturalistic pictures of animals and his hunt pieces depicting game. His son, Jacques-Charles Oudry, was also a painter.

Biography

Marie–Marguerite Oudry, the artist's wife

Jean-Baptiste Oudry was born in Paris, the son of Jacques Oudry, a painter and art dealer, and his wife Nicole Papillon,[1] relative of the engraver Jean-Baptiste-Michel Papillon.

His father was a director of the Académie de Saint-Luc art school, which Oudry joined. At first, Oudry concentrated on portraiture, and he became a pupil and perhaps a collaborator of Nicolas de Largillière from 1707 to 1712. He graduated at only 22 years of age, on 21 May 1708, at the same time as his two older brothers. The next year, he married Marie–Marguerite Froissé,[2] the daughter of a miroitier (a mirror-maker) to whom he gave lessons in painting.

Oudry became an assistant professor at Académie de Saint-Luc in 1714, and professor on 1 July 1717. He was inducted as a member of the prestigious Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1719, and was engaged as a professor there in 1743. After producing mainly portraits, Oudry started to produce still life paintings of fruits or animals, as well as paintings of religious subjects, such as the Nativity, Saint Giles, and the Adoration of the Magi.

In the 1720s Oudry was commissioned by Noël-Antoine de Mérou, director of the Royal Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory to create the designs for what has come to be one of the most iconic series of tapestries of the period. The series was called

Les Amusements Champêtres
.

Through his friend, Jean-Baptiste Massé, a portrait-painter and miniaturist, Oudry was introduced to the Marquis de Beringhen, hereditary master of the royal stables,

Tuileries and an apartment in the Louvre
.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry, by his wife Marie–Marguerite Froissé, etching after a Nicolas de Largillière painting

M. Hultz, an adviser to the Académie de Peinture, commissioned Oudry to produce a buffet, or still-life combining silver plates and ewers, fruit and game; the work was exhibited in the

Salon of 1737. Oudry timidly asked for ten pistoles for his work, but Hultz valued it much higher, insisting on paying twenty-five. Oudry was also commissioned to produce a buffet for Louis XV (exhibited in the Salon of 1743), that went to the château de Choisy
, the King's favoured hunting residence.

Hultz recommended Oudry to Louis Fagon (1680–1744), an

Fontainebleau, 1828.[7]

Oudry used a camera obscura in an attempt to speed up the process of producing landscapes, but abandoned it when he saw that the perspective and the effects of light and shade did not appear correct.

Although Oudry produced excellent scenes of animals and of hunting, he also painted portraits, histories, landscapes, fruits and flowers; he imitated

bas reliefs in monotone tints en camaïeu, used pastels, and created etchings
. He was often sent examples of rare birds to draw.

José de Rozas y Meléndez de la Cueva, 1st Count of Castelblanco (ca. 1716), Prado Museum, Madrid.[8]

An important patron was

Christian Ludwig II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who commissioned two pairs of paintings from Oudry: Three Does Watching Two Stags Fighting and A Family of Roe Deer; and A Boar Hunt and A Wolf Hunt, both delivered in 1734.[9] He later purchased a series of large paintings of animals from Louis XV's menagerie at Versailles. Oudry's initial motive for painting these works is obscure. When exhibited at the Paris Salon, they had been described as having been painted for the French king; however the commission seems to come through the king's surgeon, François Gigot de la Peyronie, who had engravings made after them,[10] and in a letter to Christian dated March 1750, Oudry wrote that they had become available for sale due to de La Peyronie's death. In addition to the portraits of the animals from the royal menagerie, Christian also bought Oudry's life-size painting of "Clara", an Indian rhinoceros which had been exhibited all around Europe to great public interest.[11]
The works are still at Schwerin.

He turned down offers to work for the

King of Denmark
, preferring to remain in France, where he maintained a large studio of assistants.

Oudry lost some of his responsibilities when Fagon was replaced by de Trudaine. He suffered two strokes in quick succession. The second left him paralysed and he died shortly thereafter in Beauvais (in present-day Oise). He was buried in the Church of Saint-Thomas in Beauvais. His epitaph on the stone was lost when the church was demolished in 1795, but was later found and placed in the Church of Saint-Étienne.

Two exhibitions curated by Hal N. Opperman, first at the Grand Palais, Paris, October 1982 – January 1983, and then in a travelling exhibition in the United States, 1983, encouraged a reassessment of this purely French portraitist and genre painter.

Gallery

Oil paintings

Textile designs

References

  1. ^ Bryan,1886-9
  2. ^ Often incorrectly stated to be Froissié.
  3. ^ Jean-Louis Beringhen had been premier écuyer to Henri IV, and the post had descended in the family.
  4. ^ Sold in his posthumous sale, Paris, 2 July 1770.
  5. ISBN 978-1-904832-77-5
    .
  6. ^ His library was sold at auction in 1744 after his death. "Catalogue des livres de feu M. Fagon, Conseiller d'Etat ordinaire, et au Conseil royal, intendant des finances. Dont la vente se fera en détail au plus offrant dernier enchérisseur Mercredi 5 Août 1744. & jours suivans, depuis deux heures de relevée jusqu'au soir en son Hôtel, ruë neuve des Petits-Champs". elec.enc.sorbonne.fr. Retrieved October 11, 2011.
  7. ^ H.N. Opperman, "The Genesis of the 'Chasses Royales'" The Burlington Magazine 112 No. 805 (April 1970:217-22).
  8. ^ "José de Rozas y Meléndez de la Cueva, 1st Count of Castelblanco - The Collection - Museo Nacional del Prado". www.museodelprado.es. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
  9. ^ Frank, in Morton 2007, p. 32.
  10. ^ Bailey, in Morton 2007, pp. 16–17.
  11. ^ Frank, in Morton 2007, p. 37.

Further reading

External links

Media related to Paintings by Jean-Baptiste Oudry at Wikimedia Commons

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