The Lion and the Fly

The Lion and the Fly, dated 1732 and at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, takes its subject from La Fontaine's Fables — the story in which a tiny fly defeats a powerful lion through persistent irritation. La Fontaine's Fables were among the most frequently illustrated texts of seventeenth and eighteenth-century France, and Oudry was the definitive illustrator of the complete edition published between 1755 and 1759, producing 276 designs over many years. This 1732 canvas predates the published edition but represents Oudry's long engagement with La Fontaine's animal world. The fable subject allowed Oudry to paint a lion — an exotic animal requiring either direct observation at a royal menagerie or careful study of previous representations — while integrating a moral or philosophical dimension into what might otherwise be pure animal subject matter.

Canvas with the challenge of depicting a lion's mane and coat with the same naturalistic precision Oudry brought to domestic animals. The lion's tawny coat, shaggy mane, and powerful form required adaptation of his standard animal painting approach to a subject he would have observed at the Versailles menagerie. The fly, if depicted, would be rendered at near-microscopic scale — an extreme contrast of scale within the same composition that parallels the fable's moral about relative power.