JEAN-BAPTISTE OUDRY (1686 - 1755) and workshop - Lot 58

JEAN-BAPTISTE OUDRY (1686 - 1755) and workshop - View of a château and its park, with figures fishing and canoeing - View of a farm, with figures playing with a swing Oil on canvas, one pair 88 x 122 cm. 90 x 124 cm. one signed and dated, lower right: JB Oudry 1729 Landscapes hold a special place in Oudry's work. The artist practiced this genre throughout his life and exhibited his work assiduously, generally eliciting enthusiastic comments from contemporaries. From 1738 to 1753, at each Salon, Oudry sent one or more landscapes, whose booklets specify the place of inspiration in most cases (Arcueil, Saint-Germain en Laye, Poissy, Beauvais, the Bois de Boulogne, etc.) and insist that the views were painted from nature. Oudry developed the habit of painting his pictures from direct observation in his early years: his biographer, Abbé Louis Gougenot, mentions the artist's frequent trips to Dieppe in the early 1720s, to witness the fishing returns and faithfully transcribe them in his compositions, and his escapades to the Chantilly forest and the Bois de Boulogne, to study plants and trees. This propensity makes it possible to trace the artist's preferred locations. In 1727 or shortly before, Henri-Camille, Marquis de Beringhen (1693-1770), one of Oudry's patrons, commissioned a series of six landscapes for his château in Armainvillers (Seine-et-Marne). All are of similar dimensions and remained in the marquis's collection throughout his life, before being sold when his estate was liquidated in 1770 (one of them sold at Christie's New-York, J.E. Safra collection, May 24, 2023, lot 35). For this series, Oudry depicted everyday scenes of French rural life in the picturesque style for which he was renowned in the 1720's. Based on observation of nature, these expressive and theatrical compositions draw on the artist's unique and inventive talent, often executed in a brilliant palette. As Hal Opperman (op. cit., 1983, p. 129) has noted, rather than faithfully depicting actual locations in the Parisian countryside, they were intended to evoke these landscapes and were therefore not the product of pure fantasy. In this sense, they constituted a novelty in French landscape painting, which led Opperman to endorse Jean Cailleux's statement that Oudry's landscapes for Beringhen should be considered "the very first 'true' landscapes of the eighteenth century" (ibid.). Our two landscapes, one of which is dated 1729, follow in the footsteps of the Beringhen commission, but are innovative in that they appear to be "house portraits", perhaps intended as a reminder, in the setting of a town house, of the owner's country estate. Sources : H.N. Opperman, J.B. Oudry, cat.exp., Paris, 1982-1983.