A unique set of illustrations of “Fables of Lafontaine” by the French painter and draughtsman of the 18th century Jean-Baptiste Oudry was sold at Christie’s auction in New York on Wednesday for 2.7 million dollars, reports AFP.

This bibliophile treasure is a thick album with 138 detailed blue-framed landscape drawings, each illustrating one of the famous stories of French biker and poet Jean de Lafontaine, such as The Frog Who Wants to Be as Big. like an ox”, “Cicada and Ant” or “Crow and Fox”.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), a French court painter of the time of Louis XV, made them in the early 1730s with a brush and black ink.

“This is the only intact volume of Oudry’s illustrations for La Fontaine,” Stein Alstyn, Christie’s international head of old drawings, told AFP, adding that a second volume existed but had been “dismantled” and scattered among collections and museums.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry is considered one of the greatest illustrators of Lafontaine’s fables, alongside Gustave Doré and Granville, and his drawings can be seen in Diane de Cellier’s deluxe editions in France.