Paysage avec un oiseau

A bird perches on the bare branch of a tree in the foreground of an open landscape, the trunk rising through foliage at the left while a river winds between tree-lined banks in the middle distance; on a rocky height at the far left stand a tower and a small building. Painted in 1730, the year after Oudry succeeded François Desportes as the leading animal painter of the French court, the canvas combines the precise study of a living bird with the calm breadth of an idealised view. The painting is held in the Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris.