Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755), Meeting at the Carrefour du Puits du Roi, Compiègne forest, or Le Botté du Roi (The Booting of the King), ca. 1733
, Pen and point of brush and black ink and gray wash, over black chalk, heightened with white, on blue paper faded to light brown, Purchased on the Edwin H. Herzog Fund with the special assistance of the International Music and Art Foundation
, 1995.1
This drawing is an early design for one of the nine panels in the famous tapestry series Les Chasses royales de Louis XV, commissioned in 1733, a project on which Oudry worked for more than ten years. The final cartoon for Rendez-vous au carrefour du Puits du Roi, the first panel in the series, is now in Fontainebleau. There were two sets of tapestries made after Oudry's designs, one for the royal apartments at Compiègne (where they still hang), and one for the duke of Parma (now in the Pitti Palace, Florence).