The Farm

The customer was the heir to the throne. Louis, the Dauphin, the only surviving son of Louis XV, ordered this picture for his private study at Versailles, and Oudry signed it in 1750, adding his court title, painter in ordinary to the king. It shows a farmyard in the Île-de-France, half-timbered buildings, cattle, sheep and farm people in the yard, ducks on the water, and beyond the trees a wide river valley in calm light, a scene of order, plenty and good husbandry.

When it went on show at the Salon of 1751, the booklet described it modestly as a picture in the Flemish manner, a nod to the farm landscapes of Rubens and other painters from Flanders. Yet it was also known by two grander names, Agriculture, and simply La France, as if this one well-run farm stood for the kingdom the Dauphin was expected to rule.

He never did. He died in 1765, nine years before his father. The canvas stayed in the storerooms at Versailles until the Revolution, spent some years at the château of Compiègne in the 1830s, and was first hung for the public at the Louvre only after the rooms were rearranged in 1848.