Landscape with a Pheasant
possibly Danthon family
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1730 - circa 1750
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 8 warps per cm
Measurements
68.5 cm (H); 58.5 cm (W)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Vyne Estate, Hampshire
NT 719646
Summary
Tapestry firescreen panel, wool and silk, 8 warps per cm, Landscape with a Pheasant, 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 set into the wooden frame of a pole screen (no. 718796).
Full description
The screen is 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 its similarity to the signed piece in the V&A, the screen at The Vyne may also have been made by a member of the Danthon family, although 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 in the National Trust’s collection at Clandon Park, paired with another screen with a design of a parrot and a squirrel (no. 1440603). 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). (Helen Wyld, 2013)
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust with The Vyne, estate and contents by Sir Charles Chute, 1st Bt (1879-1956)
Makers and roles
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