Jean-Baptiste Oudry Sixteen Eighty-Six to Seventeen Fifty-Five
Description:... Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) was one of the most prolific and versatile artists of the first half of the eighteenth century. Immensely popular in his day, his pictures and drawings were dispersed all over Europe by the time of his death, but are much less femiliar today than those of Watteau, Chardin, or Boucher. Oudry absorbed the coloristic principles of his master, Nicolas de Lagillierre, uniting these with an ever more acute vision of nature. his greatest and most original artistic contributions are in landscape, still life, and animals. Sensitivity to light and shadow in the forests, fields, and gardens around Paris sets his landscapes apart from the imaginary scenes of his contemporaries. His still lifes are masterpieces of the study of color and of a direct and simple illusionism that announces the surreal. Oudry's numerous pictures of animals and the hunt manifest a new attitude toward man's place in nature.
This volume is an important contribution to the scholarly reassessment currently under way of the overlooked and misunderstood period between the Grand Siecle of Louis XIV and the Revolution. Oudry placed a key role in helping tooreplace the elite basis of art with an appeal to a broader public. Discussing and illustrating major works from public and private collections in Europe and North America, this is the first comprehensive introduction to Oudry's art in the English Language.
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