The Fisherman and the Small Fish

Painted in 1739, this La Fontaine fable scene belongs to Oudry's extended engagement with illustrating the Fables—a project that occupied him across multiple decades and culminated in his celebrated series of drawings made for the 1755 Jombert edition. The tale of the fisherman and the small fish argues that a certain small gain in hand is worth more than an uncertain large gain in the future, a moral that carried personal and social resonance in the speculative financial atmosphere of eighteenth-century France following the collapse of John Law's system. Oudry's capacity to embody abstract moral lessons in the specific, physical, observed behaviour of animals and humans gave these fable pictures their distinctive appeal. The absence of a current known collection for this work suggests it passed through private hands after its creation, possibly as part of the extensive market for Oudry fable scenes that developed during his lifetime.

The fable scene required Oudry to integrate a human figure—the fisherman—with an aquatic setting and the fish, requiring him to manage very different textural and tonal challenges within one composition. The glint and translucency of fish scales against the opacity of water and the textured clothing of the fisherman demanded varied technical approaches.