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Lot Essay
THE ROYAL COMMISSIONS
At least ten sets of this series are known to have been woven. Five were woven for Louis XV as gifts to foreign courts and are likely to have contained the Royal coat-of-arms. The first, woven between February 1754 and April 1757, was given to Count von Moltke, marshal at the court of Denmark, in 1759 and is today in the Danish Royal Collection. One suite, woven in 1758, was probably in Madame de Pompadour's apartments at Versailles in 1781, before being sold to the Comte de Vergennes in 1784. The third Royal set was woven in circa 1759 and given to two Chinese Jesuits, Aloys Kao and Thomas Yang, on their return to China in 1765 by the foreign minister Henri Lonard-Jean-Baptiste Bertin, who was in charge of the Jesuit mission in Beijing. The Jesuits presented the set as a gift from the French colonies to the Emperor Qianlong (d. 1799) in 1767. He installed it in his 'European' Summer Palace Yuanmingyuan. After the anglo-french troops sacked the palace in 1860 two tapestries were taken to Europe, while four, including this subject, appear to have remained in the National Museum of China in Beijing and were recorded there in 1924. The fourth Royal set woven in 1767 - 1769 was supplied to the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères in 1769 but has a Greek Key pattern border. The last set woven in 1774 - 1775, excluding this subject, was supplied to the contrôleur des finances Maynon d'Inveau in 1775.
This particular tapestry does not appear to belong to any of the recorded Royal sets. There are, however, tapestries with Royal arms noted that seem to have been woven apart from the ones in the official records. Within that group are two tapestries, an example of the Foire chinoise that was in the collection of Mrs. F.F. Prentiss and is today in the Cleveland Museum of Art (M. Jarry, 'the Wealth of Boucher Tapestries in American Museums', Antiques, August 1972, p. 227), and another showing La Pêche chinoise in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (G.L. Hunter, 'America's Beauvais-Boucher Tapestries', International Studio, November 1926, p. 27), that display the same color tonalities as the offered lot. It is interesting to note that all three tapestries are also of very similar sizes and thus almost certainly belonged to the same set. It is probable that they were brought to the United States before the early 20th Century before being broken up. Two panels at least appear to have belonged to Mrs. F.S. Ames and were subsequently sold to different owners in the mid-1920s.
FRANÇOIS BOUCHER
François Boucher (1703 - 1770) supplied the designs of this series to Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686 - 1755), the director of the Royal Beauvais Tapestry Workshop as the third suite of tapestries designed for the workshop. He exhibited the set of eight Chinoiserie paintings at the Salon at the Louvre between August and September 1742 (today in the Bibliothèque in Besançon). Their designs were immediately translated to cartoons by Jean-Joseph Dumons de Tulle (1687 - 1779) and the successful series, consisting of six subjects, was woven at least ten times between July 1743 and August 1775 at Beauvais and in addition further copied were made at Aubusson. Boucher, who is known to have owned many Chinese objects, took inspiration for the tapestries from engravings, some from the previous century, but also from illustrations on export porcelain and other Chinese objects. It was arguably Boucher who popularized the Chinoiserie style again in the 1740s and his figures, objects and Oriental forms became basic components of the European rococo.
(P.-F. Bertrand, 'La Seconde "Tenture Chinoise" tissée à Beauvais et Aubusson', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, November 1990, pp. 173 - 184; C. Adelson, European Tapestry at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1994, pp. 322 - 342)
At least ten sets of this series are known to have been woven. Five were woven for Louis XV as gifts to foreign courts and are likely to have contained the Royal coat-of-arms. The first, woven between February 1754 and April 1757, was given to Count von Moltke, marshal at the court of Denmark, in 1759 and is today in the Danish Royal Collection. One suite, woven in 1758, was probably in Madame de Pompadour's apartments at Versailles in 1781, before being sold to the Comte de Vergennes in 1784. The third Royal set was woven in circa 1759 and given to two Chinese Jesuits, Aloys Kao and Thomas Yang, on their return to China in 1765 by the foreign minister Henri Lonard-Jean-Baptiste Bertin, who was in charge of the Jesuit mission in Beijing. The Jesuits presented the set as a gift from the French colonies to the Emperor Qianlong (d. 1799) in 1767. He installed it in his 'European' Summer Palace Yuanmingyuan. After the anglo-french troops sacked the palace in 1860 two tapestries were taken to Europe, while four, including this subject, appear to have remained in the National Museum of China in Beijing and were recorded there in 1924. The fourth Royal set woven in 1767 - 1769 was supplied to the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères in 1769 but has a Greek Key pattern border. The last set woven in 1774 - 1775, excluding this subject, was supplied to the contrôleur des finances Maynon d'Inveau in 1775.
This particular tapestry does not appear to belong to any of the recorded Royal sets. There are, however, tapestries with Royal arms noted that seem to have been woven apart from the ones in the official records. Within that group are two tapestries, an example of the Foire chinoise that was in the collection of Mrs. F.F. Prentiss and is today in the Cleveland Museum of Art (M. Jarry, 'the Wealth of Boucher Tapestries in American Museums', Antiques, August 1972, p. 227), and another showing La Pêche chinoise in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (G.L. Hunter, 'America's Beauvais-Boucher Tapestries', International Studio, November 1926, p. 27), that display the same color tonalities as the offered lot. It is interesting to note that all three tapestries are also of very similar sizes and thus almost certainly belonged to the same set. It is probable that they were brought to the United States before the early 20th Century before being broken up. Two panels at least appear to have belonged to Mrs. F.S. Ames and were subsequently sold to different owners in the mid-1920s.
FRANÇOIS BOUCHER
François Boucher (1703 - 1770) supplied the designs of this series to Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686 - 1755), the director of the Royal Beauvais Tapestry Workshop as the third suite of tapestries designed for the workshop. He exhibited the set of eight Chinoiserie paintings at the Salon at the Louvre between August and September 1742 (today in the Bibliothèque in Besançon). Their designs were immediately translated to cartoons by Jean-Joseph Dumons de Tulle (1687 - 1779) and the successful series, consisting of six subjects, was woven at least ten times between July 1743 and August 1775 at Beauvais and in addition further copied were made at Aubusson. Boucher, who is known to have owned many Chinese objects, took inspiration for the tapestries from engravings, some from the previous century, but also from illustrations on export porcelain and other Chinese objects. It was arguably Boucher who popularized the Chinoiserie style again in the 1740s and his figures, objects and Oriental forms became basic components of the European rococo.
(P.-F. Bertrand, 'La Seconde "Tenture Chinoise" tissée à Beauvais et Aubusson', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, November 1990, pp. 173 - 184; C. Adelson, European Tapestry at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1994, pp. 322 - 342)