18th century Aubusson Verdure Tapestry after a design by Jean-Baptiste Oudry

A Aubusson Verdure Tapestry

after a design by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755)

French, 18th Century

Woven in wool and silk at the Manufacture d’Aubusson, this monumental tapestry is conceived after a design by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Premier Peintre du Roi and

Superintendent of the Manufacture Royale de Beauvais, whose compositional vocabulary profoundly influenced the Aubusson ateliers throughout the mid-eighteenth century.

The composition is characteristic of Oudry’s celebrated verdure manner, presenting a richly wooded landscape animated by exotic and domestic fauna — likely including deer, hounds, birds of plumage, and perhaps a recumbent wolf or boar — arranged with consummate naturalism amidst dense foliage, gnarled oaks, and flowering plants rendered in a remarkably graduated palette. A sky of silvered blue opens above the canopy, lending luminosity and spatial recession to the scene.

The field is enclosed within a broad, architecturally conceived border of acanthus scrollwork, fruit swags, and floral garlands, possibly enriched with cartouches or mascaron ornament at the corners and centre rails — devices typical of the Louis XV decorative vocabulary. The palette throughout is distinguished by the warm ochres, forest greens, russet browns, and soft blues characteristic of Aubusson weaving of the period, contrasting with the sharper chromatic intensity associated with the Gobelins.

The scale — at 2.8 by 3.4 metres — places this tapestry among the more imposing examples of the type, conceived for the principal reception rooms of an aristocratic hôtel particulier or country seat.

Provenance: The Astor Collection New York, then by descent

Condition: Some old tears, previously restored ICS Sydney, Velcro to the back to hold it up.

Comparable examples: Christie’s, London, 6 June 2019, lot 47; Sotheby’s, Paris, 22 November 2017, lot 312.?