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Premium ROUILLAC
340
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Living room with La Fontaine's Fables and Child Gardeners
Co…
See original version (French)
340
-
Living room with La Fontaine's Fables and Child Gardeners
Co…
See original version (French)
Estimate €2,500 - €3,000
Voluntary lot
Description
Living room with La Fontaine's Fables and Child Gardeners
Comprising six armchairs and a sofa
Moulded, carved and cream lacquered wood.
The cabriole backs end in gendarme hats and are decorated with friezes of piastres on the upstands, acanthus leaves on the uprights, armrests with cuffs ending in scrolls, connecting dice with flower motifs. They stand on tapered, fluted and grooved legs.
Fine Aubusson tapestry in polychrome wool decorated with gardening children after François Boucher, such as gallant and pastoral scenes, a birdwatcher, a man and his dog on the backs. The seats are inspired by the Fables of La Fontaine, after Jean-Baptiste Oudry, such as the crow and the fox or hunting scenes.
Louis XVI period.
Model attributed to Martin Jullien, carpenter received master on July 23, 1777.
Sofa: Height 103, Width 177, Depth 72 cm.
Bergère: Height 96.5, Width 70, Depth 69 cm.
Armchairs: Height 88.5, Width 63, Depth 60 cm.
Provenance :
- 12th Garden Party sale, Me Rouillac, Château de Cheverny, 26 May 1996, n°169 ;
- private collection, Vendôme.
Louis XVI living room suite with Aubusson tapestries of La Fontaine's Fables and Children Gardening after Boucher and Oudry.
Bibliography: Pierre Kjellberg, "Le mobilier du XVIIIe siècle français", éditions de l'Amateur, Paris, 1989, bergères close to our salon reproduced on p. 459.
The Fables of La Fontaine (1621-1695), whose source is Aesop, inspired a vast decorative programme in the 18th century. Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), Louis XV's animal painter and artistic director of the Beauvais and Gobelins manufactures, drew the compositions between 1729 and 1734. A suite of these drawings was converted into tapestry cartoons for Beauvais, woven only sixteen times between 1736 and 1777. After Oudry's death, they were engraved in four volumes under the direction of Cochin, ensuring their distribution.
The Aubusson workshops in March also took up the theme: Oudry supplied models to the manufactory from 1731, and La Fontaine's Fables were among the most frequently woven subjects, alongside fine greenery and hunting scenes. A royal manufactory since 1665, Aubusson differed from the Beauvais and Gobelins manufactories in that its production was more accessible and varied, with the same compositions available in a wide range of formats and colours depending on the order. Aubusson weavers were free to reproduce Oudry's scenes, adapting borders, backgrounds and palettes to suit the tastes of their clients, producing seat upholstery that was never exactly the same. The seats in this show belong to this lively and varied tradition.
The backs are based on the Enfants jardiniers by François Boucher (1703-1770), a series of cartoons painted around 1751 for the Marquise de Pompadour, for the Manufacture des Gobelins to decorate the seats in her château at Crécy. These eight panels, mounted in pairs on vertical canvases by Alexis Peyrotte, passed from Crécy to Sceaux and then to the Treviso family. Reappearing at the 30th Garden Party sale on 10 June 2018, they were pre-empted by the Musée du Domaine Départemental de Sceaux. The Aubusson workshops, like those at Gobelins, had also woven these children's pastorals, spreading the theme far beyond the royal circle.
A Louis XV armchair from 1765 combining the same sources, Oudry's fables on the seat and Boucher's children on the back, is in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Bordeaux (inv. 11319).
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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