Wolves Attacking Sheep ("Rien de Trop II")

Jean-Baptiste Oudry · 1732

Medium

Pen and brush and black ink, with brush and gray wash and black-and-white gouache, on blue laid paper

Original size

31.3 × 26.1 cm (12 3/8 × 10 5/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

Oudry's dramatic study of wolves descending on a flock captures predatory violence and the terror of the helpless with remarkable economy — the slashing diagonals of the composition pulling the eye into chaos before resolution arrives. Jean-Baptiste Oudry was the preeminent animal painter of eighteenth-century France, appointed court painter to Louis XV and later director of the Beauvais tapestry manufactory. His animal subjects were distinguished by scientific attention to anatomy combined with genuine theatrical feeling — qualities evident in his handling of the predators here, each wolf rendered with muscular specificity. Working in pen, brush, and gouache on blue laid paper, Oudry built tonal drama through layered washes that anticipate the chiaroscuro more commonly associated with oil painting. Oudry was also commissioned by the French crown to illustrate all 276 of La Fontaine's Fables — a project running through much of the 1720s — which sharpened his instinct for giving animals distinct psychological character. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates Oudry's layered tonal language into brushwork on canvas, preserving the charged atmosphere and compositional tension of the original while giving it the depth and permanence that only oil paint can deliver.