A LILLE PASTORAL TAPESTRY
A LILLE PASTORAL TAPESTRY

BY KATHERINE WERNIERS, MID-18TH CENTURY, AFTER DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNGER

Details
A LILLE PASTORAL TAPESTRY
By Katherine Werniers, mid-18th Century, after David Teniers the younger
Woven in wools and silks, depicting Peasants Dancing with a musician playing bagpipes to the right flanked by blossoming trees, plants and an extensive background with a castle with formal gardens with orange potted trees and a further garden with a fountain to the right in the distance, within a border of trophies with torchres, foliate scrolls, quivers and flower bouquets, the top and lower border centred by a scrolled foliate scallop-shell within strapwork, with later blue outer slip, folded over,signed to the lower right angle 'LAVEVVEDEG. WERNIERSL. F.' and with the Lille town mark, reweaving and patching, particularly to the borders
8 ft. 11 in. x 10 ft. 11 in. (271 cm. x 333 cm.)
Provenance
Anonymous sale, Drouot Estimations, Paris, 5 June 1998, lot 200.

Lot Essay

Lille produced numerous versions of Teniers' subjects. The first recorded series was woven under Jan de Melter (d. 1698), who established his workshop in 1688, for a local client Michel de Pelletier. With the arrival of Guillaume Werniers (d. 1738), who in 1700 married Melter's daughter, Lille's Teniers tapestry production reached its climax. The subjects were also woven under the supervision of his second wife, Katherine Ghuys, who carried on the workshop for several more years, copying the subjects woven during her husband's directorship. A Teniers series would normally consist of eight panels, but these could vary widely in composition.

A tapestry with the same dancing group and bagpiper, but also including further figures, woven by Guillaume Werniers, is illustrated in H.C. Marillier, Handbook to the Teniers Tapesries, London, 1932, plate 47, while a further, apparently by Katherine, is illustrated in D. Boccara, Les Belles Heures de la Tapisserie, Milan, 1971, p. 177

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