Royal Hunts: Versailles
Manufacture Royale de Beauvais
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1690 - circa 1700
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 8 warps per cm
Measurements
2.95 m (H); 3.81 m (W)
Place of origin
Beauvais
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 516780
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, 8 warps per cm, The King Hunting at Versailles, Beauvais, c. 1690-1700. In the foreground is a hunting party of men on horseback and on foot, with King Louis XIV on a light brown horse in the centre wearing a plumed hat, holding a whip and gesturing with his hand. A small dog runs ahead of the party. In the background there is a distant view of the Château of Versailles. The scene is framed on both sides by trees. The borders are filled with colourful grotesque decoration on a yellow ground, with details including vases of flowers, exotic birds, monkeys playing musical instruments in the upper and lower borders and medallions with profile heads at the centre of each side.
Full description
The tapestry is part of a series of 'Royal Hunts' ('Chasses Royales') woven at the Beauvais manufactory in France at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. The Beauvais 'Royal Hunts' were loosely based on a series known as the 'Royal Houses' ('Maisons Royales') or the 'Months' designed in the late 1660s and woven for Louis XIV at the Gobelins in Paris. Each tapestry in the 'Maisons Royales' represented the King engaged in an activity (usually hunting of some sort) suitable to one of the months of the year, with views of royal residences in the background. The series was conceived by Charles le Brun, with details contributed by a number of other artists including Adam Frans van der Meulen. The designs for the Beauvais 'Chasses Royales' are less complex than the Gobelins 'Maisons royales', and are partly based on prints after van der Meulen of the views included in the Gobelins series. A comparison of 'The King Hunting at Versailles' at Anglesey Abbey with the Gobelins 'Avril ou Versailles: le Roi à la Chasse' shows that the foreground figures are reversed and rearranged, and that one half of the château has disappeared altogether. No complete set of the Beauvais 'Chasses Royales' is known to survive. A tapestry with the same borders as the panel at Anglesey Abbey was formerly in the collection of Chevalier, Paris (Chevalier, Chevalier and Bertrand, 1988, p. 75), and another, with views of the chateaux of Marly and Chambord, was sold at Drouot-Montaigne, Paris, 21 November 1987, lot 266. Another tapestry from the series, formerly at the Château de Langeais and still retaining its original lining with details of the tapestry's size, manufacture and the name of the workshop head Philippe Béhagle, was formerly with André Deroyan, Paris. Béhagle's name dates the weaving to between 1684 and 1705, and is useful in dating the tapestry at Anglesey Abbey. A set of four tapestries woven for the hôtel of the Tallyrand-Perigord family was with Jean-Pierre le Gros, Paris in 1992 (Country Life, 7 May 1992). A number of other individual examples are in various collections or have surfaced on the art market in the twentieth century (see for example Weigert 1964, p. 343; Jacquemart-André 1984, no. 33; Léjard plate 57; Birjukova, plate 54). (Helen Wyld, 2011)
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Manufacture Royale de Beauvais , workshop Adam Frans van der Meulen (Brussels 1632 - Paris 1690), designer Charles Le Brun (Paris 1619 – Paris 1690), designer
References
Bremer-David, 1997: Charissa Bermer-David, French Tapestries and Textiles in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 1997 Chevalier, Chevalier and Bertrand, 1988: Dominique Chevalier, Pierre Chevalier and Pascal-François Bertrand, Les Tapisseries d'Aubusson et de Felletin 1457-1791, Paris 1988 Jacquemart-André, 1984: Les Fastes de la Tapisserie du XVe au XVIIIe Siècle, exh. cat. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris 1984 Birjukova, 1974: Nina Birjukova, Les Tapisseries Françaises de la fin du XVe au XXe siècle dans les collections de l'Ermitage, Leningrad 1974 Weigert, 1964: Roger-Armand Weigert, 'Les Commencements de la Manufacture Royale de Beauvais, 1664-1705', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th series, no. 64 (December 1964), pp. 330-46 Léjard, 1946: André Léjard, French Tapestry, London 1946 Fenaille, 1903-1923: Maurice Fenaille, État général des tapisseries de la Manufacture des Gobelins depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours, 1600-1900, 4 vols., Paris, 1903-1923