L'hallali du loup 1725

Jean-Baptiste Oudry made this dramatic canvas with oil paints, likely sometime in the first half of the 18th century. Looking at the composition, you get a sense of how paintings like this were made. Beginning with a prepared canvas, the artist blocked in areas of color, and then worked up the details gradually. Oudry must have considered this a virtuoso performance, an opportunity to show his ability to capture the appearance of different textures – fur, teeth, leaves – all with the same basic medium. It is all the more impressive when you realize the scale of the painting. But it's not just technique on display here. There's a definite ideology at work, too. The fact that Oudry was commissioned to paint hunting scenes reflects the values of the aristocratic society he served. The painting depicts an actual wolf hunt, which involved specialized labor and skilled traditions such as horsemanship and dog breeding, highlighting social stratification. Ultimately, this is a painting about consumption and the dynamics of labor, class, and power.