Landscape with a Pheasant
London
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1730 - circa 1750
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 8 warps per cm, giltwood frame.
Measurements
635 mm (H); 508 mm (W)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Clandon Park, Surrey
NT 1440603.1
Summary
[Destroyed in the fire of 2015] Tapestry firescreen panel, wool and silk, 8 warps per cm, framed, Landscape with a Pheasant, one of a pair, possibly Danthon, London, c. 1730-1750. A rectangular firescreen panel with a bright red and blue pheasant perched on a low stump in front of a stone ledge and the base of a column, with a view to a landscape beyond. The panel is in a narrow painted and giltwood frame.
Full description
The screen and its pair (no. 1440603.2) are very similar to one in the Victoria and Albert Museum which has a design of a golden pheasant in a landscape with fruit and architectural ruins, and is signed ‘DANTHON’ (Museum number T.318-1979). Danthon was the name of a family of Huguenot weavers who emigrated to London from the French tapestry-producing town of Aubusson in the early years of the eighteenth century (see Hefford 1984). The same signature appears on one of a set of tapestry chair covers with scenes from Aesop’s Fables in the National Trust’s collection at Uppark (no. 137632). Due to their similarity to the signed piece in the V&A, the two screens at Clandon may also have been made by a member of the Danthon family. However a number of other London-based weavers, many of French origin, were producing small-scale decorative tapestries for use on furniture in the early and mid eighteenth century. There is an unsigned firescreen panel with an identical design to no. 1440603.1 in the National Trust’s collection at The Vyne (no. 719646). Also at Clandon is a screen woven not in tapestry but knotted-pile carpet, again with a design of a pheasant but with a more developed parkland landscape beyond, signed by Pierre Parisot (1697-1769), who set up a short-lived carpet factory in Fulham in the 1750s (no. 1440601). Although both screens are now kept in storage, their frames would originally have been mounted on pole stands and used to shield a fire, in a similar way to the example at The Vyne. (Helen Wyld, 2013)
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust in 1968 by Mrs Hannah Gubbay
Makers and roles
London, workshop possibly Danthon family, workshop
References
Hefford, 1984: Wendy Hefford, 'Soho and Spitalfields: little-known Huguenot tapestry-weavers in and around London, 1680-1780', Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, vol. XXIV, no. 2 (1984), pp. 103-112