Audran, Claude

(1657-1734)

   painter, designer, ornamentalist Born in lyon, Claude Audran was the nephew of Gérard audran and thus, too, a member of the artistically prolific Audran family. He specialized in ornamental painting and produced decorative works for the châteaux of Sceaux, Marly, la Muette, and Meudon, and for the menagerie at Versailles. Employing a verve and an imagination filled with the most fanciful concepts, he used in his arabesques, grotesques, and other pieces Chinese motifs, anthropomorphized animals, and scenes from the circus and theater, in which, like the works of jean berain, there is a continuous lively narrative, always however, in a systematic and regular framework and setting. intendant of the Luxembourg Palace, he employed Antoine Watteau as his collaborator, and produced for the gobelin works the cartoons from the eight panels known as "des Dieux" (1708). Because of the contoured grace of his motifs, as well as his sense of freedom and fantasy, Claude Audran is considered one of the creators of the rococo style that later fully developed during the reign of Louis XV.