Null TAPISSERIE D'AUBUSSON, LAST HALF OF THE 18th CENTURY

The fortune-teller

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Description

TAPISSERIE D'AUBUSSON, LAST HALF OF THE 18th CENTURY The fortune-teller Woven in wool and silk; in the foreground, a shepherdess, accompanied by a child and her flock, is addressed by a fortune-teller; the frame-like border is embellished with garlands of flowers; wear, old restorations, reduced in height and probably in width. Dimensions: 228 x 411 cm (89 ¾ x 161 ¾ in.) Bibliography: P.F. Bertrand, Aubusson tapestries of the Enlightenment. Splendors of the Royal Manufactory, Supplier of the Enlightenment, Ed. Snoeck Gent, 2013, p.183-191. An Aubusson tapestry, depicting the fortune's teller, last third of the 18th century The column and broken capitals at the foot of the palace bear witness to Julliard's Roman sojourn and to the taste for the aesthetics of ruins that became widespread in the second half of the 18th century. In addition to the influence of antiquity, Julliard was also influenced by the Nordic painters he had discovered in the studio of his master François Boucher. The young shepherd reclining in the foreground is strikingly similar to some of Abraham Bloemaert's figures. Several known weavings, including one in the Hermitage Museum, one in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Cologne), one on display at the Charlieu town hall, and a fragment in the Musée Magnin (Dijon).

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TAPISSERIE D'AUBUSSON, LAST HALF OF THE 18th CENTURY The fortune-teller Woven in wool and silk; in the foreground, a shepherdess, accompanied by a child and her flock, is addressed by a fortune-teller; the frame-like border is embellished with garlands of flowers; wear, old restorations, reduced in height and probably in width. Dimensions: 228 x 411 cm (89 ¾ x 161 ¾ in.) Bibliography: P.F. Bertrand, Aubusson tapestries of the Enlightenment. Splendors of the Royal Manufactory, Supplier of the Enlightenment, Ed. Snoeck Gent, 2013, p.183-191. An Aubusson tapestry, depicting the fortune's teller, last third of the 18th century The column and broken capitals at the foot of the palace bear witness to Julliard's Roman sojourn and to the taste for the aesthetics of ruins that became widespread in the second half of the 18th century. In addition to the influence of antiquity, Julliard was also influenced by the Nordic painters he had discovered in the studio of his master François Boucher. The young shepherd reclining in the foreground is strikingly similar to some of Abraham Bloemaert's figures. Several known weavings, including one in the Hermitage Museum, one in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Cologne), one on display at the Charlieu town hall, and a fragment in the Musée Magnin (Dijon).

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French Aubusson tapestry, 19th century. "Landscape with castle". Hand-knotted wool. Measurements: 215 x 296 cm. The refinement of this hand-woven tapestry testifies to the high quality of Aubusson tapestries. A luxuriant garden opens before us showing a small lake with bridges on its banks and a castle in the background. Cherry blossoms and rose bushes border the pond. The landscape has been resolved with ease and descriptive precision, in richly contrasting tones with a predominance of green, blue and earthy tones, with pink details. The subject is in keeping with nineteenth-century aristocratic taste. The city of Aubusson agglutinated numerous tapestry workshops, which were created by Flemish weavers who settled in the area at the end of the 16th century. They had a rudimentary operation, compared to the Royal Gobelins Manufacture: they had no painters, dyers, nor a commercial structure, so their tapestries were sold in inns, to a lower class private clientele, mainly provincial aristocrats. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Aubusson workshops specialized in vegetable tapestries (with eminently floral decoration), but the situation changed radically when, in the mid-seventeenth century, this center was reorganized by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of Louis XIV, with the aim of converting these workshops into royal manufactories. He then subjected the Aubusson and Felletin workshops to a guild regulation and, in exchange, promised to provide them with a painter and a dyer. This promise, however, would not become effective until the 18th century, a turning point for the workshops of La Marche, which would see a considerable increase in the quality of their tapestries by being able to count on a painter dedicated to making cartons and a dyer who would produce dyes of a higher quality than those used until then.