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The Wolf and the Fox

Creator

French Artist · 1686–1755

Designer

Louis XV, king of France, often called Jean-Baptiste Oudry to Versailles to paint the royal hounds--in the king's presence. "Monsieur Oudry had acquired such a habit of conversing with high-ranking persons and of working in their presence that he painted as calmly at the court as he would in his own studio," marveled a contemporary. Though his father was a painter and art dealer, Oudry's first ser

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Date: 1733
Medium: Brush and black ink and brush and gray wash, heightened with white gouache,, on blue paper
Culture: French
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: ed7a46f2-a069-4bd0-acee-2fdd2e3c5424

From the Getty Museum record

A fox, tired of eating chicken, asks a wolf how to hunt larger animals. The wolf teaches the fox to disguise himself as a wolf, and together they stalk a herd of sheep. The shepherd flees with his flock, leaving behind a sacrificial lamb. For his illustration of the tale, Jean-Baptiste Oudry chose the moment when the lamb figures out the plot. To the wolf's dismay, the lamb fools the fox by directing it to chase a rooster. The fable's moral is that to change one's basic nature is impossible. Though he worked as a tapestry designer, Oudry labored in his spare time over a five-year period to produce 276 illustrations for Jean de La Fontaine's *Fables,* a popular collection of satires written in the 1600s. Oudry's drawings were published in a luxury edition of the *Fables* in 1755.

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