Results: 1
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View: Detail
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- Date: About 1850 (screen)
About 1690 (tapestry) - Medium: Gilt beechwood, tapestry, crimson silk lining, glazed cotton lining
- Object size: 109 x 69.5 x 35.5 cm, screen
- Height: 76.5 cm, tapestry
- Width: 58.8 cm, tapestry
- Inv: F285
- Location: Billiard Room
- Date: About 1850 (screen)
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- Description
- Provenance
- Further Reading
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- This fire screen was made in the 19th century to display a piece of tapestry made at the Gobelins Manufactory, which has been cut down to fit the frame. In the second half of the 19th century, older textiles, such as tapestries and embroidered panels, were often mounted on new furniture made in the 18th-century style. A fire screen was designed to protect anyone sitting in front of it from the full heat of the fire. In the summer, it was used to hide the empty grate.
Probably woven in the late 17th century, the tapestry may represent a scene from a classical myth, where the god Mercury (the patron of communication, poetry, commerce and travellers) played the pipes to Argus to lull him to sleep so that he could kill him. In the 1956 Wallace Collection furniture catalogue, the design was attributed to Claude III Audran (1658–1734), but it is more in the manner of Jean Bérain (1637–1711), Louis XIV's influential court designer and architect. The design is less advanced than Audran's designs for the 'Portières des Dieux' series, commissioned in 1699, and probably dates from before the temporary closure of the Gobelins in 1694.
- This fire screen was made in the 19th century to display a piece of tapestry made at the Gobelins Manufactory, which has been cut down to fit the frame. In the second half of the 19th century, older textiles, such as tapestries and embroidered panels, were often mounted on new furniture made in the 18th-century style. A fire screen was designed to protect anyone sitting in front of it from the full heat of the fire. In the summer, it was used to hide the empty grate.