The Ostrich
Manufacture Royale de Beauvais
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1664 - circa 1690
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 7½ warps per cm
Measurements
3.10 m (H); 2.82 m (W)
Place of origin
Beauvais
Order this imageCollection
Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire
NT 1129473
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, 7½ warps per cm, The Ostrich, from a set of four Verdures with Birds and Animals, Manufacture Royale de Beauvais, c. 1664-1690. A landscape with a number of birds in the foreground including an ostrich, a pheasant, a swan and a turkey. The swan stands in a stream which flows into a pond further back that is also filled with birds swimming. Beyond this on the left the water flows through a weir with some other buildings nearby, and on the far side of the water on the right there are two small figures and some cows among the trees. There is a view to a distant landscape in the centre and a castle on a hill at the top right. There are borders on all four sides of acanthus leaves twisting around a pole on a light blue ground, with fleurs-de-lys in the corners.
Full description
‘The Ostrich’ comes from a series of ‘Verdures with Birds’ produced at the Beauvais manufactory. Their designs, formerly attributed to a certain Firens, were created for Beauvais, however many of the exotic birds and animals they contain are taken from a series of oil sketches by Pieter Boel (1622-1674) of animals in the menagerie of Louis XIV. Boel’s oil sketches were made for use as models in a series of tapestries called the ‘Maisons du Roi’, made at the Gobelins and initially woven exclusively for the King. The ‘Maisons du Roi’ included views of the royal palaces set in architectural frames with a shallow foreground populated by animals and birds. The birds and animals in the Beauvais tapestries were probably taken from the prints published after Boel’s designs rather than the sketches themselves, which remained at the Gobelins (for Boel’s sketches see Foucart-Walter 2001). The tapestries were first produced under the directorship of Louis Hinart (fl. 1637-d. 1697) who retired in 1678. There is a set of four in the National Trust’s collection at Petworth House, one of which bears Hinart’s signature (nos. 485263-6). On his retirement Hinart hand over the directorship to his son, Jean-Baptiste Hinart (b. 1640), who left Beauvais in 1684. He was succeeded by Philippe Béhagle, who is also known to have woven verdure tapestries from the same designs (Coural and Gastinet Coural 1992, p. 21). As the example at Hardwick is not signed, it is not possible to pinpoint exactly when it was woven. Louis XIV bought some 250 tapestries from Beauvais during the tenure of the two Hinarts (Badin 1909, pp. 3-8). These are listed in the inventories of the kings’ collections (Guiffrey 1885-6). Among them are a large number of tapestries described as ‘Verdures with Birds’ and ‘Verdures with Animals’, indicating that the King owned sets from the same series as the tapestry at Hardwick (Vittet 2010, pp. 342, 357-63, 367, 414). Beauvais verdures were also used as diplomatic gifts: in 1681 Louis Hinart sold the king a set of six landscapes ‘with birds from the menagerie and animals from Versailles’ as a gift for the Chancellor of the ambassador of Moscow. Louis Hinart’s own house was also decorated with verdure tapestries made at Beauvais (Coural and Gastinet-Coural 1992, p. 13). A set of four ‘Verdures with Birds and Animals’ is in the Maison de Mon-Repos in Lausanne (Lüscher 2001). Various other examples have surfaced on the art market, usually with borders with scrolls or ‘rinceaux’, like the Lausanne set (Vittet 2010, p. 214). The four tapestries at Petworth have the same acanthus-leaf borders as the one at Hardwick. (Helen Wyld, 2013)
Provenance
Acquired through the National Land Fund in 1956 and transferred to the National Trust in 1959.
Credit line
Hardwick Hall, The Devonshire Collection (acquired through the National Land Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1959)
Makers and roles
Manufacture Royale de Beauvais , workshop after Pieter Boel (Antwerp 1622 – Paris 1674), designer
References
Vittet, 2010: Jean Vittet and Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, La Collection de Tapisseries de Louis XIV, Dijon 2010 Lüscher, 2001: Philippe Lüscher, ‘Verdures avec Animaux de la Ménagerie’, in Tapisseries anciennes de la Maison de Mon-Repos et du Musée Historique de Lausanne, Lausanne 2001 Foucart-Walter, 2001: Elizabeth Foucart-Walter, Pieter Boel, 1622-1674: Peintre des Animaux de Louis XIV. Le fonds des etudes peintes des Gobelins, exh. cat. Musée du Louvre, Paris 2001 Coural and Gastinet Coural, 1992: Jean Coural and Chantal Gastinet-Coural, Beauvais: Manufacture nationale de Tapisserie, Paris 1992 Bremer-David, 2007: Charissa Bremer-David, ‘Manufacture Royale de Tapisseries de Beauvais, 1664-1715’, in Thomas Campbell et al., Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2007 Badin, 1909: Jules Badin, La Manufacture de Tapisseries de Beauvais depuis ses Origines jusqu’a nos Jours, Paris 1909 Guiffrey, 1885-6: Jules Guiffrey, Inventaire général du mobilier de la couronne sous Louis XIV (1663-1715), 2 vols., Paris 1885-6