Still Life with Monkey, Fruits, and Flowers
Jean-Baptiste Oudry (French, 1686–1755)
1724
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 141.6 × 144.8 cm (55 3/4 × 57 in.); Framed: 172.8 × 175.3 × 12.7 cm (68 × 69 × 5 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Major Acquisitions Centennial Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Jean-Baptiste Oudry received numerous commissions from Louis XV of France, who admired his skill as a painter of animals and still lifes. The artist frequently combined his two specialties, as in this work, in which a monkey, an animal celebrated in this period for its mischievous and lustful character, snatches a few grapes. The French Rococo taste for the sensual is manifest in the lush, overripe quality of the fruits and flowers, reminiscent of 17th-century Flemish works that Oudry is known to have studied. Paintings such as this typically adorned dining rooms as part of an overall decorative scheme.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
