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At this instant Dechartre came into the room with Count Martin, who, after beating him at billiards, had acquired a great affection for him and was explaining to him the dangers of a personal tax based on the number of servants one kept. A pale winter sun piercing the mists of the Seine, illuminated the dogs painted by Oudry on the doors of the dining room.
At this instant Dechartre came into the room with Count Martin, who, after beating him at billiards, had acquired a great affection for him and was explaining to him the dangers of a personal tax based on the number of servants one kept. A pale winter sun piercing the mists of the Seine, illuminated the dogs painted by Oudry on the doors of the dining room.
Charles Coypel had gained fame by a set of hangings in which scenes were taken from Don Quixote. Oudry asked himself why he should not rival them at Beauvais. The result was a similar series, but composed by Charles Natoire, the artist who had drawn a set of Antony and Cleopatra for the Gobelins. The same idea extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well as to the Fables.
These were the especial work of Oudry who composed them, who put into them his best work as animal painter, and who set them on the looms of Beauvais many times. They had a success immediate. They became the fashion of the day, and the pride of the factory. If the artist had drawn with inspiration, the weavers copied with a fidelity little short of talent.
Both Oudry and his partner in business matters, Besnier, had died. And we are well on toward the time when kingly support was a feeble and uncertain quantity. The factory lacked the inspiration and patronage to continue its importance. In a few years more fell the blight of the Revolution. The factory was closed. It re-opened again under new conditions, but its brilliant period was past.
The models of Béhagle, Oudry, Charron are copied with fidelity to their loveliness, and it is these that after a few years of wear on furniture take on that mellowness which long association with human hands alone can give. It is scarcely necessary to say that antique furniture tapestry is rare; its use has been too hard to withstand the years.
Collection of Wm. It is only as the history of a factory touches us that we are interested in its changes. The result of Oudry's direction is one that we see so frequently in a small way that it is agreeable to recognise its cause. Oudry was pre-eminently a painter of animals.
The place of director at Beauvais was empty; d'Antin must have the credit of filling it wisely with the painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry. He was a man endowed with the sort of energy we are apt to consider modern and American. He already occupied a high place in the Gobelins, and retained it, too, while he lifted Beauvais from the Slough of Despond, and carried it to its most brilliant flowering.
But such thoughts border on heresy and schism; away with them. Casanova, Leprince, and a host of others are tacked onto the list of artists who painted models. We can no longer call them cartoons, so changed is the mode for Beauvais. But Oudry and Boucher are pre-eminent. To the former, who was director as well as artist, is attributed the fame of the factory and the resulting commercial success.
At the same time the factory of Aubusson, and looms in Flanders, were throwing upon the market a quantity of verdures, of which the amateur must beware. Oudry verdures or outdoor scenes are but few in model, and beautifully woven. In the prosperity of Beauvais, ambition carried Oudry into a gay rivalry with the Gobelins.
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