Still Life with a Rifle, Hare and Bird ("Fire")

Still Life with a Rifle, Hare and Bird ("Fire"), dated 1720 and at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, is the Fire canvas from Oudry's four-elements series, representing Fire through the gunpowder and rifle of the hunt — the explosive force that launches the shot and kills the game. The allegorical connection between fire and the hunt's killing mechanism is conceptually elegant: fire as both elemental force and human technological application, embodied in the fowling piece. By 1720 the four-elements series was nearly complete, representing Oudry's most sustained engagement with the allegorical tradition. The rifle itself — a complex manufactured object of metal and wood — required Oudry to apply his material observation skills to an artifact as demanding as any natural subject.

Canvas with the rifle as the compositional and thematic anchor for the Fire allegory. The fowling piece requires distinct treatment for each of its materials: the metal barrel (reflective, with complex highlight structure), the wooden stock (warm-toned, with grain and polish), and the brass or steel lock mechanism (small-scale reflective detail). The dead hare and bird complete the composition by providing the organic counterweight to the manufactured object, and their surfaces contrast materially with the rifle's hard precision.