A 17th century English tapestry
Spring
Circa 1680. Woven in London, possibly by Thomas Poyntz at Hatton Garden.
In silks and wools, with a man digging beneath a cedar tree girdled with ivy while a woman pushes a plough-handled barrow. A third gardener transplants a seedling while another clips a hedge with shears and, beyond, a man stands on a ladder to train trees over an arched arcaded pergola, supported by atlantids and caryatids, that leads to a gatehouse. The border consists of a profuse arrangement of fruits and flowers, with spaniels, parrots, snakes, tassels, acanthus scrolls and dolphins.
The scene consists of elements that appear in Mortlake and other post-Mortlake tapestries - themselves derived from earlier Flemish designs - intended to represent the months of March, April and May.
A version of the same design hung at Belhus, in Aveley, and was described by H.C. Marillier in ‘English Tapestries of the Eighteenth Century - A Handbook to the Post-Mortlake Productions of English Weavers’, publ. The Medici Society, London 1930, p.68, where he attributes it, and other associated weavings, ‘either to the Poyntz factory at Hatton Garden or to its influence’. The tapestry can be seen in a photograph of the Tapestry Bedroom used in the catalogue prepared by Alfred Savill and Sons for the auction of the contents that was held from 8th to 17th May 1923. It had been joined to other panels, some of the same set, to make a tapestry 37 feet 6 inches long, and the entire length was sold as lot 388 for £787, 10s 0d. Another section of the tapestry was used to illustrate one of two articles for ‘Country Life’ on Belhus, issue 1219, 15th May 1920, page 661.
A tapestry of the same set, depicting ‘Summer’, is illustrated as plate 146 of ‘Wandteppiche (III. Teil, Band 2): Die germanischen und slawischen Länder’, Heinrich Göbel, publ. Leipzig 1934, where it is attributed to Thomas Poyntz and the Hatton Garden workshops. There are close correspondences in the treatment of the slightly elongated figures, and in the narrow format of the tapestry itself, while the clothing that the two main figures wear is almost identical. A copy of the Gobel illustration is included below.
The border of ‘Summer’ is different to that adopted in the weaving of the current tapestry, and matches that of the Belhus tapestries. However, the border here was also used on two tapestries of Months or Seasons that were sold from the collection of Major W. G. Lambarde at Christie’s King Street on 21st December 1926 as lot 136. They were there described as having been woven at Mortlake, but Marillier (ibid.) states that they were ‘certainly post-Mortlake’ and associates them with Poyntz.
