Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 35 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,438 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 280 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 13,229 items Explore
  • 209 items Explore
  • 1,225 items Explore
  • 8,732 items Explore
  • 5,089 items Explore
  • 9 items Explore
  • 167 items Explore
  • 13,004 items Explore
  • 13,621 items Explore
  • 4,810 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,007 items Explore
  • 4,759 items Explore
  • 15 items Explore
  • 422 items Explore
  • 252 items
  • 100 items Explore
  • 19,964 items Explore
  • 34 items Explore
  • 1,924 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,072 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 456 items Explore
  • 917 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,263 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 793 items
  • 20 items
  • 4 items
  • 26 items
  • 61 items
  • 28 items
  • 319 items Explore
  • 6 items
  • 44 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 2 items
  • 7 items
  • 121 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 976 items Explore
  • 812 items
  • 95 items
  • 27 items
  • 107 items
  • 37,206 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,870 items Explore
  • 1,530 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,413 items Explore
  • 9,684 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,778 items Explore
  • 7,359 items Explore
  • 4,583 items Explore
  • 1,893 items Explore
  • 1,194 items Explore
  • 22,724 items Explore
  • 3,663 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,350 items Explore
  • 23 items Explore
  • 352 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,093 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,146 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,955 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 310 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 63 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,909 items Explore
  • 1,582 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,137 items Explore
  • 1,320 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 847 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 132 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 20 items
  • 281 items
  • 313 items
  • 685 items Explore
  • 346 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,545 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,394 items Explore
  • 40,347 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,293 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,702 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 777 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 23,159 items Explore
  • 917 items
  • 66 items
  • 22,636 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,337 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,028 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 499 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,309 items Explore
  • 179 items
  • 59 items
  • 454 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 128 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 284 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 271 items Explore
  • 11,294 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,035 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 8,298 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,970 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,884 items Explore
  • 185 items
  • 19 items
  • 144 items
  • 7 items
  • 853 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 269 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,055 items
  • 3,522 items Explore
  • 695 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,743 items Explore
  • 93 items
  • 18,936 items Explore
  • 3,136 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 10,982 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,540 items Explore
  • 38 items
  • 13,281 items Explore
  • 3,461 items Explore
  • 5,689 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 49,735 items Explore
  • 646 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,701 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 438 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 204 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,667 items Explore
  • 1,360 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,520 items Explore
  • 912 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 314 items
  • 686 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 4 items
  • 2,286 items Explore
  • 1,662 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,876 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 81 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,083 items Explore
  • 44 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,670 items Explore
  • 23,377 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,374 items
  • 179 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 84 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,570 items Explore
  • 3,582 items Explore
  • 2,904 items Explore
  • 4,798 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 42 items
  • 6,910 items Explore
  • 4,841 items Explore
  • 256 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,975 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,897 items Explore
  • 193 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 466 items Explore
  • 6,118 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,860 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,935 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,132 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 84 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,502 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 24 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,257 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 70 items
  • 17 items
  • 154 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 460 items
  • 4 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,553 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 9,496 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,789 items Explore
  • 1,162 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,561 items Explore
  • 1,920 items
  • 18 items
  • 7,857 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,950 items Explore
  • 1,401 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,169 items Explore
  • 14,874 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 15 items
  • 5,686 items Explore
  • 12,284 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,215 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 4 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 666 items Explore
  • 8,372 items Explore
  • 75 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 4,606 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,702 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 3,704 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,238 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 733 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,136 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 228 items Explore
  • 79,972 items Explore
  • 3,135 items Explore
  • 2,874 items Explore
  • 25 items
  • 5,345 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,513 items Explore
  • 4,930 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 31 items
  • 1 items
  • 76 items
  • 29 items
  • 86 items
  • 3 items
  • 1,176 items Explore
  • 109 items
  • 805 items
  • 12,447 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,710 items Explore
  • 214 items
  • 17,037 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 626 items Explore
  • 1,597 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,130 items Explore
  • 375 items
  • 2 items
  • 326 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

Tapestry after the Indian Manner

John Vanderbank the elder (fl. 1682 - d. 1717)

Category

Tapestries

Date

circa 1691 - circa 1692

Materials

Tapestry, wool and silk, 9 warps per cm

Measurements

3.37 m (H); 4.21 m (W)

Place of origin

Soho

Order this image

Collection

Belton House, Lincolnshire

NT 436999.1

Summary

Tapestry, wool and silk, 9 warps per cm, one of two Tapestries after the Indian Manner, John Vanderbank, London, c. 1691-2. A tapestry with a number of small, colourful figure groups arranged on a tobacco-coloured ground. These include women walking in a landscape with attendants carrying parasols near the centre, fishermen on the left hand side, the veneration of a statue of Buddha at top left, boatmen carrying vegetables at lower right, a nurse with a child pushing a bird on a cart at centre right, and a mule carrying passengers in the upper centre. The tapestry has borders with vases and birds on a brown ground, with two narrow bands of decoration at the inner and outer edges. Blue galloons are visible on all four sides, and the signature IOHN VANDREBANC FECIT appears on the lower galloon.

Full description

As Edith Standen has noted (Standen 1980, pp. 134-138), the majority of the figures in this tapestry derive from the illustrations to the English edition of Arnold Montanus's 'Atlas Japannensis', first published in Amsterdam in 1669 and published in English the following year by John Ogilby. For example, the fishermen on the left hand side are taken from an illustration of the modes of fishing seen at a town called Duvos (Ogilby 1670, p. 74), and the woman near the centre being followed by a servant carrying a parasol is taken from an illustration of the costumes of the inhabitants of Naugasaque (Nagasaki) (Ogilby 1670. p. 77). The two 'Tapestries after the Indian Manner’ at Belton House, commissioned in 1691 and signed by John Vanderbank, are the earliest surviving example of one of the most popular designs in the history of English tapestry. Each panel is made up of a series of lively and exotic small figure groups arranged on a plain brown ground. The overall effect is clearly intended to imitate the Japanese and Chinese lacquer panels that were imported into Europe in increasingly large quantities in the seventeenth century. Such panels were used as screens or in pieces of furniture, or on occasion set into the panelling of walls, as the Belton tapestries have been since the 1690s. With the increase in trade between Europe and the far East during the seventeenth century, largely through the channels of the Dutch and English East India companies, came a new taste for imported furniture and luxury goods including oriental porcelain, lacquer and textiles (see for example Impey 1977; Jarry 1981). Western artists and craftsmen also began imitating the forms and decoration of imported wares. The 1698 inventory of Belton House, remodelled by Sir John Brownlow in the 1680s and 1690s, lists a Chinese cabinet assembled from imported lacquer panels, and a collection of Chinese porcelain alongside Vanderbank’s tapestries (Belton 1983). The taste for such goods was eclectic, and the terms 'Chinese', 'Japanese' and 'Indian' were used fairly indiscriminately in the late seventeenth century to describe images and objects of oriental inspiration. Despite the design sources deriving from Japanese sources, Vanderbank’s tapestries were referred to at the time as ‘after the Indian Manner’. The term ‘Chinoiserie’, used today to describe goods made in this broad style, only became widespread in the late nineteenth century (Mitchell 2007, p. 11). The two tapestries are signed 'IOHN VANDREBANC FECIT' for John Vanderbank (fl. 1682 – d. 1717), a weaver of Flemish origin who had worked in Paris, and was appointed Yeoman Arrasworker to William III and Queen Mary in 1689, a year after their accession to the British throne. Vanderbank's 'Indian Manner' tapestries were first recorded in 1690, when a set of four was commissioned for Queen Mary's apartments at Kensington Palace. The tapestries were the first royal commission from Vanderbank (Standen 1980, p. 119; Thomson 1914, p. 143). Queen Mary's tapestries do not survive, but there is evidence to suggest that the pair at Belton reflect their appearance very closely. The tapestries were commissioned by Sir John Brownlow from Vanderbank in 1691, the year the royal set was delivered. Vanderbank's contract with Brownlow, dated 12 August 1691, survives among the Belton papers, and specifies that the tapestries were to be identical to those at Kensington: "That he the said John Vanderbank shall make two pieces of Tapestry hangings according to the dimensions to be given by the said Sr John Brownlow and the said hangings are to be of Indian figures according to ye pattern of the Queens wch are at Kensington and to be finished as well in every kind or else the said Sr John Brownlowe shall not be obliged to have theme ... but if the hangings aforesaid be finished and made according to the said pattern the said Sr John Brownlowe is to pay unto the said John Vanderbank fifty shillings per dutch ell Square to be paid as followeth that is to saye fifteen pounds monthly for six months and the rest when they shall be delivered wch shall bee within the space of seven months from the date hereof..." (Belton 1983). Vanderbank's 'Chinoiserie' or 'Indian manner' tapestry design was to prove immensely popular, and there are numerous records of commissions from Vanderbank for these tapestries, right up until the 1720s. As well as the model used for Queen Mary and at Belton, Vanderbank also produced a second, related design with slightly smaller and less elaborate figures, which would therefore have been cheaper to produce. Whereas most of the figures in the Belton tapestries are taken from the illustrations to the 'Atlas Japannensis', the figures in the second series are drawn from more disparate sources, including Indian miniatures, Turkish costume prints and Chinese porcelain and lacquer panels (Standen 1980 pp. 127-131). While only a handful of weaving of the Belton designs survive, numerous examples of Vanderbank's less elaborate series are known – including, within the National Trust's collection, a large panel at Clandon Park, Surrey (no. 1440604), a series at the Vyne, Hampshire, cut up to fit the walls of the Tapestry Room (no. 719698), and a small panel at Nunnington Hall in Yorkshire (no. 980694). The two tapestries at Belton were installed in the Chapel Drawing room soon after their purchase, set into wooden panelling marbled in blue, which has survived with no alteration aside from the renewal of the painted marbling. The tapestries are recorded in an inventory of 1698 as "Two pieces of Dutch hangings", in 1727 as "Two pieces of fine tapestry hanging", in 1754 as "Two pieces of fine tapestry hangings India figures", and finally in 1986 as "A pair of Soho Chinoiserie tapestries" (Belton 1983). (Helen Wyld, 2012)

Provenance

Commissioned from John Vanderbank by Sir John Brownlow (1659-97) in 1691, and installed before 1698; thence by descent to Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow (b. 1936); given by him to the National Trust with the house and fixed contents in 1984

Credit line

Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by The National Trust in 1984)

Marks and inscriptions

On lower galloon, towards right: IOHN VANDREBANC FECIT

Makers and roles

John Vanderbank the elder (fl. 1682 - d. 1717), workshop

References

David Mitchell, 2007: ‘The Influence of Tartary and the Indies on Social Attitudes and Material Culture in England and France, 1650-1730’, A Taste for the Exotic: Foreign Influences on Early Eighteenth-Century Silks Designs, Riggisberg 2007, pp. 11-43 Belton, 1983: unpublished report on the Belton MSS (Lincolnshire Archives), 1983 (copy at Belton House) Jarry, 1981: Madeleine Jarry, Chinoiserie: Chinese Influence on European Decorative Art, 17th and 18th centuries, New York 1981 Impey, 1977: Oliver Impey, Chinoiserie: The Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration, Oxford 1977 Standen, 1980: Edith A Standen, 'English Tapestries "After the Indian Manner"', Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 15 (1980), pp. 119-42 Scheurleer, 1960-62: Th H Lunsingh Scheurleer, 'Documents on the Furnishing of Kensington House', Walpole Society, vol. 38 (1960-62) Thomson, 1973: W G Thomson, A History of Tapestry from the Earliest Times until the Present Day, 3rd edition, Wakefield 1973

View more details

Related articles