A fine 18th century Aubusson tapestry

‘La Grosse Tour’

Circa 1751-1765

From a series of seven tapestries known as ‘La Tenture de Petites Figures’, the cartoons for which were designed by Jean-Joseph Dumons (1687-1779) in 1751, with retouchings by François Boucher (1703-1770).

Woven in silk and wool with a young woman reclining beneath a lofty thatched shelter amid tall sinuous trees, her head gently cradled by her shepherd companion who holds his houlette and points towards his sheep cooling themselves beside some swans in a calmly flowing river, over which a cowherd crosses a wooden bridge beneath the large round tower from which the tapestry takes its name.

The two painters had previously collaborated at the Beauvais tapestry workshops, and here Dumons adapted an existing Boucher painting, ‘The Washerwoman’ - now in the collection of the Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf (inv. no. M 245) - replacing the figure of the laundress with that of a crouching dog, itself abstracted from Boucher’s ‘Paysage près de Beauvais’ (Hermitage, museum number: HE-5734).

The exceptionally fine weave of the tapestry echoes that of an example in the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon (inv. no. 2132), while another more coarsely woven version may be found in the collection of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (acc. no. 1964.74).

Vide: ‘Aubusson - Tapisseries des Lumières’, Pascal-François Bertrand, publ. Snoeck 2013, pp. 149-156, for a comprehensive discussion of this tapestry.

237cm (93¼”) high and 346cm (136¼”) wide.