# The Fox and the Turkey Hens

- By: Jean-Baptiste Oudry (French, 1686–1755)
- Date: 1733
- Medium: brush and black ink and gray wash heightened with white gouache, blue ink in margin; framing lines in brown ink
- Classification: Drawing
- Dimensions: Image: 24 x 18.8 cm (9 7/16 x 7 3/8 in.); Sheet: 31 x 26 cm (12 3/16 x 10 1/4 in.)
- Culture: France
- Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1977.93)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1977.93/1977.93_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

This drawing depicts a fable about turkeys whose anxieties about falling victim to a fox ultimately make them susceptible to the predator. It was one of 276 designs produced by Jean-Baptiste Oudry related to humorous but educational stories compiled by French poet Jean de La Fontaine in the later 1600s. Published in four luxurious volumes between 1755 and 1759, The Fables of La Fontaine withOudry’s illustrations was one of the most ambitious publishing projects of the artist’s time. The books were art objects meant to be collected more than read, but they were successful enough that they were reissued several times in later centuries.