Watermark: none visible through lining.
While seemingly a self-contained scene, Oudry's design is related to a vignette in the right foreground of the first of nine panels in the artist's ambitious tapestry series “The Royal Hunts of Louis XV” (Les Chasses royales de Louis XV). Commissioned in 1733, the series occupied Oudry for fourteen years, although Hal Opperman nots that Oudry may have begun thinking about the series as early as 1728. There were two sets of tapestries produced after Oudry's designs. The first was created for the royal apartments at the chateau de Compiègne, woven between 1736 and 1750. The second set was woven between 1742 and 1753 and was sold to the Duke of Parma and is now in the Pitti Palace, Florence.
For the project Oudry made nine full-scale cartoons, as well as oil sketches, numerous compositional drawings, and studies for individual figures. This scene depicts the large retinue of Louis XV, halting at the crossroads in the oak and beech forest adjacent to the royal chateau of Compiègne. Amid the activity of his entourage, with dogs straining at their leashes, the king is fitted with his hunting boots. As he prepares for the hunt, the king welcomes the arrival of Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, the comte de Toulouse, a legitimated son of his grandfather Louis XIV. The final cartoon in oil on canvas for the Meeting at the Crossroads of the King's Well (Rendez-vous au carrefour du Puits du Roi), the first panel in the hunt series, is now in the collection at Fontainebleau (inv. no. 7011). The cartoon shows the revision of the composition that took place after the present sheet was completed.
Signed in pen and black ink, at lower left, "J B Oudry".
Devaux, former owner.
De Dioncourt, former owner.
L'Aigle, Comte de, former owner.