Suites of tapestry

The sewing thread colors blend into a pleasant harmony as in a painting where the brush color pastels shape until it is reached the end of paper. Joy reached apogee completion work delighting the eyes, the eye astonished by what the hand could accomplish. My heart is pounding, thinking, it is ’my work . If you put your heart into what you do something useful will be accomplished. Ideally will be if you really want to see the end that will be always unexpected.

What really impresses me is the Beauvais tapestry manufacture, that was the second in importance, after the Gobelins tapestry, of French tapestry workshops that were established under the general direction of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV. Whereas the royal Gobelins manufacture executed tapestries for the royal residences and for ambassadorial gifts, the manufacture at Beauvais always remained a private enterprise.

The great period of Beauvais tapestry begins with the arrival of Jean-Baptiste Oudry in July 1726, replacing the unsatisfactory Jacques Duplessis. Oudry turned to other artists to supplement the tapestry cartoons he was producing; from Charles-Joseph Natoire's designs Beauvais wove the suite of Don Quichotte, and from François Boucher, starting in 1737, a long series of six suites of tapestry hangings, forty-five subjects in all, constituting the familiar "Boucher-Beauvais" suites that embody the rococo style: the Fêtes Italiennes, a set of village festivals in settings evoking the Roman Campagna, the Nobles Pastorales, a further suite of six chinoiseries, now in a lighter, Rococo handling.