The Tiger Hunt
Velay
Category
Architecture / Features & Decoration
Date
1807 (after)
Materials
Wallpaper and giltwood
Measurements
2170 x 3000 mm
Place of origin
Paris
Collection
Attingham Park, Shropshire
NT 608084.1
Caption
The 8th Lord and Lady Berwick thoughtfully added to Attingham’s Regency collection. This bold and colourful wallpaper showing exotic scenes and tiger hunts was hung in 8th Lady’s bathroom and she left strict instructions to the National Trust for the room to be well-ventilated to prolong its life.
Summary
One of seventeen vertical drops of panoramic wallpaper, this one listed as drop 25 in the manufacturers information. Previously attributed to Joseph Dufour but now considered to be probably by Velay of Paris. European visitors sit on a rock with two Hindu temples behind them. Hand blocked paper. The scenes, some of which are said to have been taken from William and Thomas Daniell’s “Oriental Scenery” published in London in 1795, depict the right bank of the River Ganges, with tigers being hunted on horseback and mounted on an elephant. Two temples are taken from Daniell’s engraving “Hindoo Temples at Bishabund” (op. cit. pl. II). Mounted in a narrow ribbed giltwood frame. The “Tiger Hunt”, variously known as “Paysage Indien”, “Chasse au tigre”, “Chasse indienne” or “Vues de l’Inde”, was attributed by Nancy McClelland to Dufour and dated to 1815 (N. McClelland, Historic Wall Papers, Philadelphia and London, 924, p. 360). She illustrates a set in the Putnam-Hanson House, 94 Boston Street, Salem, Massachusetts. However, the set has been attributed to the Velay Manufactory (see O. Nouvel-Kammerer, Papiers Peints Panoramiques, Exhibition Catalogue, Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Paris, 1998, pp. 306-307). The Velay Manufactory was a contemporary of Dufour and active in Paris after 1807. Other examples of this set are in a private collection in Puy-de-Dôme, Rhone, Haute-Saône, France, in Belgium and Jönköping, Sweden.
Provenance
Attingham collection; bequeathed to the National Trust with the estate, house and contents of Attingham by Thomas Henry Noel-Hill, 8th Baron Berwick (1877-1947) on 15th May 1953. Acquired by the 8th Lord Berwick when he was Attaché at the Paris Embassy, c.1903.
Makers and roles
Velay , manufacturer