Jean-Baptiste Oudry

Biography

Wire of Jacques Oudry, main painter and merchant of tables on the Bridge Notre-Dame, and of his wife Nicole Papillon, who belonged to the family of the engraver Jean-Baptist-Michel Papillon, Jean-Baptiste Oudry accepted the first elements of its art at the school of the control of Saint-Luc, whose his/her father was director. Its progress being growing, one placed it to Nicolas de Largillière, of which it became soon the commensal and the friend, so much so that this last charged it with the care of its domestic affairs.

Oudry, being old only twenty-two years, was allowed at the same time the May 21st 1708 with the academy of Saint-Luc as his two brothers. it offered for piece of reception a Saint-Jerome in bust, holding with a hand a book and having pressed the other on a death's-head. This fabric decorated the vault of the control. Oudry was devoted initially to the portrait; one quotes those of his sons, that of Mr. d' Argenson, lieutenant of police force, finally the Portrait of the czar Pierre Ier , carried out for Russia.

It had to give up this kind according to the proper councils of its professor Largillière and an amateur which carried interest to him, Mr. Hultz, honorary adviser of the academy of painting. Mr. Hultz had ordered from Oudry a dresser (living room of 1737); when it was a question of the payment, the young artist asked for ten timidly spray of his work, but Mr. Hultz, who knew himself there, stopped it while saying to him: “I estimate it more”, and it counted twenty-five of them to him. Another dresser, carried out for the king (living room of 1743), was seen with the castle of Choisy.

However our painter felt attracted towards the kind of the animals and the fruits; all its studies were directed on this side. While waiting for that it drew from this new career of the sufficient means of existence, it composed of the tables of history; it carried out a Nativité and a Saint-Gilles , which were placed in the Saint-Leu church of Paris, and a Adoration of the magi for the chapter of Saint Martin's day of the Fields.

Oudry married in (1709) Marie-Marguerite Froissé (and not Froissié, as one often printed), girl of a miroitier and to which it gave lessons of painting. The beginnings of the young couple were painful; one did not need less joined together work of the two husbands to manage to gain an annual sum of nine hundred francs.

Oudry was named (May 1714) assistant professor with the control, and professor on July 1st, 1717. However, it raised its claims higher, it was thus made approve with the royal academy of painting (June 26th, 1717) and was accepted titular on February 25th, 1719 on Abundance with its attributes . Let us say continuation which it became assistant with professor on June 4th, 1739 and professor on September 28th, 1743.

Oudry was indebted to the miniaturist Massé, his friend, to become acquainted with the marquis de Beringhem, first rider of the king: it was the beginning of its fortune. In addition to many works which were ordered to him for Its Majesty, it obtained a workshop in the court of the princes to Tileries and a housing with the Louvre. It had formed there a famous cabinet, which reached the figure of forty thousand francs to the sale which took place after its death. “It did not admit there, says the abbot Gougenot, his biographer, that his own tables”; also it was shown to have sold copies, improved by him with the truth, in order to preserve the originals; it is what made say to Desportes that he “liked Oudry, when they were entirely with his hand”.

Mr. Hultz recommended Oudry to the intendant of Fagon finances, who entrusted to the artist decoration in arabesques frays of flowers and birds of the living room of his property of Vauré and his country cottage of Fontenay-Aux-Roses. Oudry followed already royal huntings and made frequent studies in the Forêt of Compiegne to manage to return its subjects with more truth. Its position was from now on assured.

The manufacture of Beauvais, formerly so flourishing under Colbert, had already imperceptibly fallen in decline; it was a question of raising it. Mr. Fagon threw the eyes on his protected Oudry, which he wanted to charge with this care. Oudry and Besnier, its associate, were authorized by letters patent of the March 23rd 1734 to restore manufacture; it was granted four thousand books per annum for the maintenance of the house; nine hundred books to train apprentices and ninety thousand books to repair the losses which the associates could make. Mr. Fagon was administrator in title, but all the weight of the administration actually fell down on Oudry, that its associate helped only for the bookkeeping. Oudry, with this operation, gained a hundred and thousand books which it poured in its family; but Mr. Gougenot teaches us that this benefit well not very considerable was had regard with the care, the sorrows and the frequent voyages which the artist had to support. Not being able to only be enough with the execution to the tables which the copyists were to reproduce, Oudry associated Boucher and Natoire.

Qualities that Oudry had deployed in Beauvais as administrator, the very particular monitoring whom he exerted on the tapestries of huntings of the king which were carried out with the Gobelins according to its tables, drew to him the attention of Mr. de Tournessin, who entrusted to him the surinspection of this establishment with two thousand books of salary.

So many occupations did not divert however the artist of its art; one is surprised quantity of works of which he is the author, and he took share with the fourteen exposures which followed one another of 1737 to 1753. If it is necessary to add faith to the sincerity of its words in its own cause, Oudry would however not have had more facility than another, but it would have been endowed with a marvellous activity, since he often answered: “I do not go more quickly than another, but I work more, and often, my charged pallet, I waited until it was dawning”. Any rare bird killed in a royal hunting for the Natural history museum were sent to him so that it made studies of them; its conscience was such as it achieves up to ten voyages to Dieppe to paint fish in their freshness there.

Wanting to save time, Oudry had initially had recourse to the use of the obscure room for the drafts which it was going to frequently make with Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer, with Chantilly, the Bois de Boulogne and in the gardens of Arcueil, where to some extent a school was held of landscape designers in the open air; it was obliged to give up it, being seen that the prospect was not right and that the light effects and of shade differed from those which nature really presents.

Oudry left a great number of drawings; most known are the two hundred and seventy-five that bought Mr. de Montenault, and which was used with the edition known as of the farmer general (Paris, Dessaint and Saillant, 1765-1769, 4 folio vol.) of the fables as the Fountain, and whose engraving and direction was entrusted to Charles-Nicolas Cochin. Mr. of the Wood-Jordan, in his Mixtures (1807, T. 3, p. 60), teaches us moreover that Oudry had drawn the Almanach of rebus of 1716, and that “this painter repented to have worked with a similar work”.

Oudry painted the portrait, the history, huntings, the landscape, the animals, the fruits, the flowers; he imitated the low-reliefs in the perfection; he made pastel, decoration; it also engraved with the etching, and Robert Dumesnil (T. 2, p. 188-206) described us his work, which is composed of sixty fifteen parts. Oudry had better done to concentrate all its faculties on only one kind, that where was called its vocation, the reproduction of huntings and the animals; it would undoubtedly have risen higher still than it did not arrive. It composed well and with facility; its knowledge in natural history perhaps was not extended enough, and it is that which one realizes when its animals were not drawn according to nature. Like colourist, one could reproach him a tendency too marked the green and ask him more for heat.

One owes in Oudry two conferences which were read with the Academy and very tasted this company. The first: “On the manner of studying the color by comparing the objects ones with the others”; the second: “On the care which one must take while painting”.

As private man one reproached him for having sought to draw a too great lucre from his works, but it was its right after all, and its satisfying towards his/her friends was extreme; it pushed so far the love from the country, which it twice refused by the very advantageous offers of the czar and king de Danemark not to leave France. No matter what very hard, it was of a jovial nature, and more once at Mr. Fagon, in Vauré, it improvised in the thickets of the theaters where one played the comedy, readily filling itself the role of Pierrot while being accompanied by the guitar, of which it played passably.

Oudry did not survive a long time its guard and friendly Mr. Fagon; the successor of this last, Mr. de Trudaine, to carry out a dream of administrative economy, removed some of the privileges of Oudry, leaving him only the direction of the manufacture of Beauvais; this measurement carried a real damage to the fortune of the artist, who did not continue of them his functions with less zeal; but a deep sorrow had seized him; two apoplectic attacks followed one another within a very brought closer time; he succumbed to the last, which had been accompanied by paralysis. He died the April 30th 1755 and was buried in the Saint-Thomas church of Beauvais, where its epitaph had been placed. The Saint-Thomas church, which went back to the 13th century, having been demolished in 1795, the epitaph had disappeared. Mr. Badin, now directing of the Goblins, when he was administrator of the manufacture of Beauvais, found by chance the invaluable inscription in a painter and glazier of the town of Beauvais, which made use of it “to crush its colors”; Mr. Dadin hastened to acquire of it, and it was sealed by its care in the church Saint-Etienne, parish of manufacture. Here is the copy: “Here rests to Me Jean-Baptiste Oudry, painter ordinary of the roy, professor in his royal academy of painting and sculpture, boarder of the roy, managing director of the royal manufacture of the tapestries of Beauvais, marguillier and benefactor of this parish, deceased the first May 1755 engraver in charge of the tombstone inscription took the date of the burial for that of death. By singular and fatal coincidence, the editors of the '' Mémoires news on the academicians '' let escape a misprint about death from Oudry, which they make die the 3 instead of the April 30th, 1755, 69 years old. Request for its heart”.

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