Jean-Baptiste Oudry Peintre De Courre : Les Chasses Royales De Louis Xv

Exhibition at the Château de Fontainebleau, 13 October 2024 - 27 January 2025

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), the king's ordinary painter and inspired cantor of the royal venery, illuminated the reign of Louis XV with a multitude of exceptional works. No painter of the 18th century was better able to convey the world of hunting than he was, depicting the coats of dogs and deer and the plumage of wild game, and immersing us in the forests of Compiègne and Fontainebleau.

This richly illustrated exhibition catalogue looks back at Oudry's ability to glorify his sovereign in inspired compositions, and focuses in particular on the culmination of his art: the Royal Hunting Hanging, woven at the Gobelins manufactory from cartoons detailing the various stages of a laisser-courre, a ritualised exercise skilfully orchestrated by a majestic apparatus.
Nearly sixty notes and a dozen essays also illustrate the extent to which Oudry's work exerted a visible influence on exuberant creations in a wide variety of fields.