1733
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Fox and the Turkey Hens is a 1733 by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a fox creeping toward a group of nervous turkey hens in a sunlit field. This drawing was made to illustrate one of La Fontaine’s fables—short stories that teach a lesson. The turkeys worry so much about the fox that they don’t notice him sneaking closer. Oudry drew over 270 of these scenes, turning old tales into lively pictures. To see more of these animal stories, look up the subject france, 18th century.
This drawing depicts a fable about turkeys whose anxieties about falling victim to a fox ultimately make them susceptible to the predator. It was one of 276 designs produced by Jean-Baptiste Oudry related to humorous but educational stories compiled by French poet Jean de La Fontaine in the later 1600s. Published in four luxurious volumes between 1755 and 1759, The Fables of La Fontaine withOudry’s illustrations was one of the most ambitious publishing projects of the artist’s time. The books were art objects meant to be collected more than read, but they were successful enough that they were…
The most recent edition of La Fontaine’s Fables illustrated by Oudry was a colored version produced in 2007 by Editions Diane de Selliers.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a French Rococo painter, 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.
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