Still Life with Monkey, Fruits, and Flowers

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

1724

Jean Baptiste Oudry (French, 1686–1755)

Jean-Baptiste Oudry received numerous commissions from Louis XV of France, who admired his skill as a painter of animals and still lifes. The artist frequently combined his two specialties, as in this work, in which a monkey, an animal celebrated in this period for its mischievous and lustful character, snatches a few grapes. The French Rococo taste for the sensual is manifest in the lush, overripe quality of the fruits and flowers, reminiscent of 17th-century Flemish works that Oudry is known to have studied. Paintings such as this typically adorned dining rooms as part of an overall decorative scheme.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Title: Still Life with Monkey, Fruits, and Flowers
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1724
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed right: J.B. Oudry 1724 (on the base of the architecture)
Dimensions: 141.6 × 144.8 cm (55 3/4 × 57 in.); Framed: 172.8 × 175.3 × 12.7 cm (68 × 69 × 5 in.)
Credit Line: Major Acquisitions Centennial Fund
Reference Number: 1977.486
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/94126/manifest.json

Hal N. Opperman, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, vol. 1 (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1977), pp. 78-79, 528–29, no. P447, vol. 2, fig. 100.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report 1977–78 (Chicago, 1978), pp. 5, 11, frontispiece (color ill.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: 100 Masterpieces (Chicago, 1978), pp. 25, 69 (color ill.).
“La Chronique des arts,” Gazette des Beaux–Arts 6th ser. 93 (1979), suppl. to no. 1323, p. 77.
Amina Okada, “J. B. Oudry, 1686–1755: La Tentation de la nature morte,” Le Petit Journal des grandes expositions 122 (1982), n. p.
“Une Ténébreuse Affaire,” Apollo 117 (January 1983), p. 2, fig. 1.
James Yood, Feasting: A Celebration of Food in Art: Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago (New York: Universe, 1992), n. p., no. 9 (ill.).
Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago, 1996), pp. 109–112, 111 (ill.).

Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, J.–B. Oudry, 1686–1755, 1982–83, cat. 32 (cat. 17 in English catalogue); traveled to Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, Texas, and Kansas City, Missouri.

Louis Aubert, Lyon (died c. 1886); his sale, Hôtel des Ventes, Lyons, April 12–13, 1886, lot 43, as Singe dérobant des fruits. Paris art market, c. 1970 [according to Opperman 1977 and telephone conversation of Opperman with Martha Wolff, July 12, 2005]. Heim Gallery, London by 1977; sold to the Art Institute, 1977.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.