Still Life of a Hare and a Partridge

Still Life of a Hare and a Partridge, dated 1739 and at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, exemplifies the game piece tradition that Oudry inherited from Flemish painters and elevated to the status of high art at the French court. The hare was among the most common subjects in game still life — abundant, legally hunted by the aristocracy, and offering a complex warm-toned fur that was a technical challenge for painters. The partridge, typically depicted alongside the hare, provided a contrasting surface type — feather versus fur — and a different scale that gave compositional variety to the paired arrangement. By 1739 Oudry was producing game pieces with absolute technical assurance, and this Stockholm work represents his mature command of the format. The Nationalmuseum's multiple Oudry works document his sustained output across three decades.

Canvas with the paired game composition requiring close observation of two distinct animal surfaces: hare fur and partridge feather. Each requires different brushwork — the hare's coat built through layered short strokes following the fur direction, the partridge feathers rendered individually for texture while handled in masses for tonal structure. Oudry's characteristic approach to game still life places the subjects against a neutral or landscape ground that focuses all attention on the animal surfaces.