RARE TAPESTRIAN in wool and silk representing on a tobacco b - Lot 219

Lot 219
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Result : 88 000EUR
RARE TAPESTRIAN in wool and silk representing on a tobacco b - Lot 219
RARE TAPESTRIAN in wool and silk representing on a tobacco background a rich composition called "grotesque" decorated with dancing musicians and a trumpeting character seated on an elephant covered with a mantling carpet; the whole is detached on a perspective with simulated paving punctuated with canopied architectures or colonnades with elongated sphinges and richly decorated with pampers, quivers, draperies, flowered and foliated garlands.The scene is framed by a superb Chinese border with motifs "à la Bérain" on a cream background of peacocks, characters, winged terms, flowered baskets, foliage scrolls, cassolettes ... framed by interlacing centered ovals or a frieze of water leaves. Manufacture of Beauvais after a cardboard of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1634-1699) Inspired by engraving of Jean 1st Bérain (1640-1711). Period Louis XIV, end of the XVIIth or beginning of the XVIIIth century. 300 x 450 cm Scratches and small restorations This lot was described by the Cabinet Etienne-Molinier Bibliography: - Roger-Armand Weigert, "Les commencements de la manufacture royale de Beauvais, 1664-1705." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 64 (1964): 344. - Jules Badin, La manufacture de tapisseries de Beauvais depuis ses origines jusqu'à nos jours, Paris: Société de Propagation des Livres d'Art, 1909), 12-13. - Edith Standen, European Post-Medieval Tapestries and Related Hangings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 2:441-458, no. 64a-f. - Fiske Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo (New York: W. W. Norton, 1943), 54. - Anna Gray Bennett, Five Centuries of Tapestry, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Revised Edition, 1992, p.258. The tapestry we are presenting, entitled The Elephant, is part of the famous "Grotesques" woven at the Royal Manufacture of Beauvais from 1688 onwards, depicting characters and fantastic subjects on a plain tobacco or sandy background, more or less directly inspired by Pompeian models taken up in the Renaissance, here reinterpreted by Jean I Bérain (1640-1711), draughtsman of the King's Chamber, ornamentalist and organizer of Louis XIV's decorations and festivals. The hanging consisted of six pieces divided into three vertical and three horizontal panels; the verticals represented the Offering to the god Pan, the Offering to Bacchus and the Musicians; while the horizontals represented The Elephant, The Animal Tamers and The Camel. Woven until 1732, this hanging was a huge success with French and European enthusiasts and nowadays more than one hundred and fifty pieces are listed in major French and international public and private collections. Thus, the hanging was woven over more than forty years and it knew how to adapt to the taste of the various ornamental and decorative styles of its time, adaptation particularly visible in the various borders framing the main scene. Thus, the first weavings, corresponding to the piece we are proposing, present a rich chinoiserie border with "Bérain" decoration; later, less elaborate borders, notably in zigzags, also known as bâtons rompus, replaced the initial border; in total, eight different borders are listed (see Adelson, 1994, n° 18; Bremer- David in New York, 2007b, n° 51: Bremer-David in Brosens et al., 2008, n° 43). It should be noted in particular that Louis XIV owned a complete hanging of Grotesques on a yellow background surrounded by a rare border known as "à godrons" as can be seen on the hanging of the archbishopric of Aix-en-Provence (Ély and Roy, 2008, p. 22-29, repr.) or on a piece of the Toms collection (Reyniès in Lausanne, 1995, n° 4, repr.). However, only two tapestries sold at the Palais Galliera on April 1 and 2, 1963, lots 191 A-B, plates XIII-XIV ("Les Baladins" or "Le Chameau," 3.35 x 4.90 m; "L'Éléphant," 3.35 x 4.25 m) have exactly the dimensions of the two largest pieces described in the Crown inventories (Boccara,1971, L'Éléphant repr. p. 139); their large size is explained by their presentation on the walls of the Château de Marly (see J. Vittet and A. Brejon de Lavergnée, La collection de tapisseries de Louis XIV, Editions Faton, Dijon, 2010). Concerning more particularly the "elephant" tapestries with Chinese borders, they are among the most accomplished pieces of the hanging. They depict a theatrical and fanciful story centered on a caparisoned pachyderm around which musicians, dancers and animals are depicted in a rich environment of arabesques, floral ornaments and architectural structures. Nowadays, among the rare tapestries "with the elephant" listed, often with variations in the treatment of the borders, let us quote in particular: a first specimen preserved in the archives of the National Museum of Art in Paris.
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