Scientist of the Day - Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Clara the Rhino, by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, oil on canvas, 1749, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Germany (Wikimedia commons)
Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a French artist and animalier, died Apr. 30, 1755, at the age of 69. He was born Mar. 17, 1686, in Paris. Oudry specialized in still lifes, and in the 1740s, he produced a series of animal paintings for his patron, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in northern Germany. But Oudry may be best known for his painting of Clara the rhino (first image).
Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Oudry, oil on canvas, by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, 1753, Louvre (Wikimedia commons)
Clara, an Indian rhinoceros orphaned as an infant, had been brought to the Netherlands in 1741 by an enterprising Dutch sea captain, who then took her on tour. Over the next 17 years, Clara visited cities in the Netherlands, then Germany, then Switzerland, and became quite the rage. In 1749, Clara was given an audience with King Louis XV at Versailles, and she then moved on to Paris, where she would spend the next few months. It was there that Oudry encountered Clara, and vice versa, and Oudry executed a wonderful portrait of Clara in oil, which he sold to the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and which hung in the Duke's castle for years. During a remodeling in the 19th century, the painting was removed, rolled up, stored, and forgotten.
Clara the Rhino, by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, oil on canvas, 1749, on display at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2022 (dailysabah.com)
In 2000, the painting was re-located and chosen for restoration by the Getty Foundation. Although the painting was in reasonably good shape, the restoration was quite a project, since the painting was a life-size portrait of Clara, which meant it was about 10 by 15 feet in size. When the seven-year restoration was completed in 2007, the painting went on display at the Getty Museum, along with others of Oudry's painted animals, and then Clara was returned to Schwerein, where she hangs today, when she is not out on loan, as she was to the Rijksmuseum in 2022 (third image).
Rhinoceros, engraving (after Oudry) by Jacques de Seve, in Histoire naturelle, by Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, vol. 11, pl. 37, p. 202, 1763 (Linda Hall Library)
Another viewer of Clara in Paris was Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, who that very year, 1749, published the first volume of what would become his 44-volume Histoire naturelle, a one-man Enlightenment zoological tour-de-force. By the time he issued vol. 11 of the Quadrupeds in 1763, he was ready for the pachyderms, and his artist, Jacques de Seve, did not have to look far to find a prototype for the rhinoceros. It was deja v’oudry all over again (fourth image). If Oudry had still been alive when the print appeared (which he was not), he might have found reason to protest the lack of credit he received for what was essentially an engraved copy of his painting.
Three statuettes and a statue of Clara the rhino, after Oudry, Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (barber.org.uk)
Many statuettes of Clara were fashioned in the mid-18th century, and it seems that most of them were copied from Oudry’s painting (or Buffon’s print of Oudry’s painting) rather than Clara herself. Museums like to collect these and display them, in small exhibitions, as the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham did some years back (fifth image).
Statuette of Clara the Rhino, sculpted by Pieter Camper, 18th-century, recently acquired (2025) by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (rijksmuseum.nl)
Not all of the 18th-century paintings and sculptures of Clara were derived from Oudry's giant canvas. Pietro Longhi painted Clara when she visited Venice in 1751, and the great Dutch anatomist and naturalist (and, apparently, animalier), Pieter Camper, fashioned a lovely sculpture of Clara, without a nod to Oudry, that was recently acquired (2025) by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (sixth image).
Dust jacket, Oudry's Painted Menagerie: Portraits of Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Mary Morton, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007 (author’s copy)
There is a portrait of Oudry, painted when he was 67, in the Louvre, although I doubt that it is hanging in public view (second image). Our Library owns the catalogue of the Getty Museum exhibition, titled Oudry's Painted Menagerie (2007; last image), and if you are more interested in Clara than Oudry, there is a reasonably recent book on the rhino as well: Clara's Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, by Glynis Ridley (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004).
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
