Research
Painting on Chinese patterned silk. Six panels, the decoration of each in four regions, the lowest with birds and flowers, and the upper three with figures taken from seventeenth-century French prints depicting royalty and allegorical figures placed in garden settings. Copious floral decoration throughout. Laid to a linen stretcher.
This set of six panels is datable to the 1690s and, being of such a delicate and fragile medium, is a remarkable survival of the French art of painting on silk. The late seventeenth century was the time when such silk pieces began to be set into walls, as interior schemes became increasingly integrated. Painted silks are often mentioned in French seventeenth- and eighteenth-century inventories, where they are referred to as Pekin Peint, hinting at the Chinese origin of the technique, but survivals are rare, especially ones in the excellent condition of the present examples. They may originally have been incorporated into such a decorative scheme as wall panels or formed folds of a screen. At this time such screens were certainly popular in the bedrooms and boudoirs of aristocratic French ladies and the panels’ appeal to this demographic would have been intensified by their subject matter. The figures depicted on the present screen are taken from several series of prints depicting royalty and examples of high fashion by leading engravers of the day.
Full research report available on request.