Works by Jean-Baptiste Oudry

Animals, from live dogs to dead game hung from a hook, fill much of the work of Jean-Baptiste Oudry, the Paris-born painter whom Louis XV made painter of the royal hunt.

Oudry began with portraits, as a pupil of Nicolas de Largillière from 1707 to 1712, before turning to game and animals. Even the 1722 portrait of Henri Camille, Chevalier de Beringhen brings in the hunt: the sitter dangles a dead partridge as a spotted dog stretches up at it. Still lifes of 1719–21 are named for elements: “Fire” hangs a hare and birds beside a rifle, and “Water” piles dead fish and birds beside a spaniel and live ducks.

He illustrated La Fontaine's Fables in spare hours over five years, while his main work was designing tapestries. The Eagle and the Magpie and The Wolf and the Fox, both of 1733, are brush and ink, grey wash and white on blue paper, each scene inside a frame drawn in blue and black. In the first, the birds cross a pale sky over a stream and a village with two spires.

Sources: Wikidata, Wikipedia, National Gallery of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Nationalmuseum. Portrait: Jean-Baptiste Perronneau.