SOHO, FIRST HALF 18TH CENTURY, IN THE MANNER OF JOHN VANDERBANK

This tapestry, known as Couple under a Canopy, with its realistic three-dimensional figures on floating islands inspired by motifs found on Chinese lacquer screens or cabinets, belongs to a distinct group known as the Indian (or Indo-Chinese) series, which are usually on a brown or black ground, and depict Chinese, Indian and Turkish motifs variously arranged to create at least eight subjects, described by modern scholars as, The Harpist, The Concert, The Toilette of the Princess, The Palanquin, The Tent, The Tea Party, Couple with a Servant, and Couple under a Canopy (K. Brosens, European Tapestries in the Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven and London, 2008, p. 348). At least three Soho Tapestry workshops used the same cartoons (templates) thereby making attribution of unsigned pieces such as this example ‘highly problematic’ (ibid., p. 350): John Vanderbank (active 1689-1717), yeoman arras-maker at the Great Wardrobe tapestry workshop in Great Queen Street, in the parish of Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, produced tapestries for Mary II at Kensington Palace, described as ‘designed in the Indian manner’, which were listed in the 1697 inventory of the palace as ‘Seven peices [sic] of Tapistry [sic] hangings with India figures 9 foot deep’; the lesser-known Michael Mazarind, who had an independent workshop in Arlington Street, previously occupied by the tapestry-maker James Bridges, and Leonard Chabaneix of Huguenot descent, who took over Mazarind’s premises from 1702. To date, only one Indian tapestry, a version of The Harpist, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, bears Vanderbank’s signature.

The present tapestry is related to one formerly in the collections of the Hon. Victor McLaren, and the 2nd Baron Aberconway, signed ‘M. Mazarind’ (by tradition, originally purchased by Catherine the Great from Houghton Hall, Norfolk; sold from the Arthur Morton Grenfell collection in these Rooms, 30 January 1919, lot 134; illustrated W. Gordon Hunton, English Decorative Textiles, London, 1930, pl. 44, and H. Honour, Chinoiserie: The Vision of Cathay, London, 1961, fig. 29). The reoccurrence of the central motif, Couple under a Canopy, has even led to the present tapestry being described as ‘a reduced version’ of the Mazarind example (Standen, op. cit., p. 126). The Mazarind tapestry is the only surviving one with the workshop mark for this maker denoting it as highly significant, and thus the association with the present tapestry is particularly intriguing. However, tapestries attributed to Mazarind customarily appear to have a distinctive border of cups, small teapots and vases. Interestingly, Victor McLaren also owned a second version of Couple under a Canopy, which additionally features a comparable border to this tapestry but is not identical (Hunton, op. cit., fig. 42).

The present tapestry also bears other decorative elements found on tapestries created at Soho. The borders of festoons of fruit, flowers and foliage hanging from rings and tied with ribbons is very similar to those found on the celebrated set of four Soho tapestries made for Elihu Yale after his return from India in 1692, later at Glemham Hall, Suffolk, and now at the Yale University Art Gallery, entitled The Concert, The Toilet of the Princess, The Promenade (or The Harpist), and The Palanquin (W. Tappan, ‘The Tapestries of Elihu Yale’, International Studio, December 1925, pp. 209-213). The Yale set is not signed but bears the English mark: a red cross on a white shield. A second version of The Concert, also at Yale, and again unsigned, features near-identical borders (M.T.J.R., ‘An Important New Tapestry’, Bulletin of the Associates in Fine Arts at Yale University, vol. 10, November 1941, p. 1; museum nos. 1926.30, 1926.32). Furthermore, the two standing musicians and the two women by the zigzag fence found in this tapestry are featured but reversed in the Yale’s version of The Palanquin, again also with similar borders (Standen, op. cit., p. 124, fig. 5). While the monkey sitting in a tree in the lower right corner of this tapestry, is also reversed in the Metropolitan Museum’s version of The Concert (ibid., p. 122, fig. 3).