Jean-Baptiste Oudry

De Steurs collection, Paris (according to pencil inscription on mount)

Laid down. Some losses at top edge. Paper slightly discoloured throughout. Some minor rubbings, especially towards right edge. Otherwise good condition. Sold in a modern gilded frame.
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This previously undocumented drawing relates to Oudry's large painting of the same subject, executed in 1721, exhibited at the Salon of 1725, purchased at Oudry's sale in 1755 for the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and today still in Schwerin.¹  In 1725, perhaps in connection with the painting's appearance at the Salon, Oudry himself made an etching², reproducing the composition in reverse, which he used as the frontispiece for a series of four prints of similar subjects.  Since the present drawing, though in the same direction as the painting, has exactly the same composition and dimensions as the print, it seems likely that Oudry made it in preparation for the print, rather than as a preparatory study for the painting (a function presumably performed by the smaller, wash drawing of the subject in a French private collection³).  In 1725 Oudry was still an inexperienced printmaker -- his first serious essay in this medium dates only from the previous year⁴ -- so it is very understandable that he would have needed to make such a detailed ricordo of his painting, from which to work when making his print.  

1.  Schwerin, Staatliches Museum, inv. no. 184; H.N. Opperman, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 2 vols., New York/London 1977, no. P441, fig. 71
2.  Opperman, op. cit., no. E51, fig. 115
3.  Ibid., no. D980, fig. 72
4.  Ibid., no. E50