BEAUVAIS
Another name to conjure with, after Gobelins is Beauvais. In general
it means to us squares of beautiful foliage,--foliage graceful,
acceptably coloured, and of a pre-Raphaelite neatness. But it is not
limited to that class of work, nor yet to the chair-coverings for
which the factory of Beauvais is so justly celebrated. This factory
has woven even the magnificent series of Raphael, the designs without
which the Sistine Chapel was considered incomplete. But this is
anticipating, and an inquiry into how these things came about is a
pleasure too great to miss.
The factory at Beauvais was founded by Colbert, under Louis XIV, in
1664. In that respect it resembles the Gobelins factory, but there
existed an enormous difference which had to do with the entire fate of
the enterprise. The Gobelins was founded for the king; Beauvais was
founded for commerce. The Gobelins was royally conceived as a source
of supply for palaces and chateaux of royalty and royalty's friends.
Beauvais was intended to supply with tapestry any persons who cared to
buy them, to the end that profit (if profit there were) should be to
the good of the country.
So the factory was founded at Beauvais as being convenient to Paris,
although it was not known as a place where the industry had
flourished hitherto, notwithstanding the old tapestries still in the
cathedral which are accorded a local origin in the first half of the
Sixteenth Century. And the king granted it letters patent, and large
sums of money to start the enterprise, which had to be given a
building, and men to manage it and to work therein, and materials to
work with, in fact, the duplicate in less degree of the appropriations
for the Gobelins, except that the furniture department was omitted.
The idea was practically the same as that in the mind of the paternal
Henri IV when he united the scattered factories with royal interest
and patronage, but with always the large end in view of benefiting his
people financially, as well as in the province of art. With our modern
republican views we can criticise the disinterestedness of a monarch
who maintains a factory at enormous public expense exclusively for the
indulgence of kings.
And yet, it seems impossible to make both an artistic and commercial
success of a tapestry factory--at least this is the conclusion to
which one is forced in a study of the Beauvais factory.
Louis Hinart was the man appointed to construct the buildings and to
stock them, and the royal appropriation therefor, was 60,000 livres.
He was to engage a hundred workers for the first year, more to be
added; and special prizes were temptingly offered for workmen coming
from other countries, and to the contractor for each tapestry sold for
exportation.
[Illustration: HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS
Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century. Design by Vincent]
[Illustration: HENRI IV AND GABRIELLE D'ESTREES
Design by Vincent]
Thus was trade to be encouraged, and the venture put on its feet
commercially. But alas, the factory was not a success. Tapestries were
woven, hundreds of them, and they delight us now wherever we can find
them, whether low warp or high, whether large pieces with figures or
smaller pieces almost entirely verdure of an entrancing kind. But the
orders for large hangings, the heavy patronage from outside France,
was of the imagination only, and the verdures for home consumption did
not meet the expenses of the factory. After twenty years of struggle,
Hinart was completely ruined and ceded the direction of the factory to
a Fleming of Tournai, Philip Behagle. As most of the workers were
Flemish, this was probably not disagreeable to them.
Behagle, more energetic than Hinart, with a gift for initiative, set
the high-warp looms to work with extraordinary activity. As though he
would rival the great Gobelins itself, he reproduced the most
ambitious of pieces, the Raphael series, _Acts of the Apostles_, and a
long list of ponderous groups wherein oversized gods disport
themselves in a heavy setting of architecture and voluminous
draperies. He also produced some contemporary battle scenes which are
now in the royal collection of Sweden.
Not content with copying, Behagle set up a school of design in the
factory, realising that the base of all decorative art was design. Le
Pape was the artist set over it. From this grew many of the lovely
smaller patterns which have made the factory famous. Its garlands have
ever been inspired, and its work on borders is of exquisite conception
and execution.
It is considered a great fact in the history of the factory that the
king paid it a visit in 1686; that he paraded and rested his important
person under the shade of the living verdure in its garden. But it
seems more to the point that Behagle made for it a success both
artistic and commercial, and this continued as long as he had breath.
Also was it a feather in his cap that at the time when the Gobelins
factory was sighing and dying for lack of funds, the provincial
factory of Beauvais not only remained prosperous, but opened its doors
to many of the starving operatives from the Gobelins ateliers, thus
saving them from the horrid fate of joining the Dragonades, as some of
their fellows had done.
But the followers of the able Behagle had not his capability. After
his twenty years of prosperity the factory languished under the
direction of his widow and sons, and that of the brothers Filleul, and
Micou, up to the time when the Regent Philip was fumbling the reigns
of government, and when everything but scepticism and Les Precieuses
was sinking into feeble disintegration. The factory became a financial
failure from which the regent had not power to lift it.
Again we see the name of the son of Madame de Montespan, the Duke
d'Antin, who was at this time director of buildings for the crown and
in this capacity had the power of choosing the directors of both the
Gobelins and Beauvais. The place of director at Beauvais was empty;
d'Antin must have the credit of filling it wisely with the painter
Jean-Baptiste Oudry. He was a man endowed with the sort of energy we
are apt to consider modern and American. He already occupied a high
place in the Gobelins, and retained it, too, while he lifted Beauvais
from the Slough of Despond, and carried it to its most brilliant
flowering.
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XVI
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]
It is only as the history of a factory touches us that we are
interested in its changes. The result of Oudry's direction is one that
we see so frequently in a small way that it is agreeable to recognise
its cause. Oudry was pre-eminently a painter of animals. Add to this
the tendency to draw cartoons in suites and the demand for furniture
coverings, and at once we have the _raison d'etre_ of the design seen
over and over again nowadays on old tapestried chairs, the designs
picturing the _Fables of La Fontaine_. These were the especial work of
Oudry who composed them, who put into them his best work as animal
painter, and who set them on the looms of Beauvais many times.
They had a success immediate. They became the fashion of the day, and
the pride of the factory. If the artist had drawn with inspiration,
the weavers copied with a fidelity little short of talent. So it is
not surprising that a set of sofa and chairs on which these tapestries
are displayed brings now an average of a thousand dollars a piece,
even though the furniture frames are not excessively rich.
Beauvais set the fashion for this suite, but as success has imitators
who hope for success, many factories both in and out of France copied
this series. How shall we know the true from the false? By that sixth
sense that has its origin in a taste at once instinctive and
cultivated.
Oudry drew hangings for the small panelled spaces of the walls, to
accompany this set of _Fables_. He also painted scenes from Moliere's
comedies, which at least show him master of the human figure as well
as of the lines of animals.
We are now, it must be remembered, in the time of Louis XV, the time
of beautiful gaiety and light sarcasm, of epigramme, and miniature,
and of all that declared itself _multum in parvo_. Therefore it was
that even wall-hangings were reduced in size and polished, so to
speak, to a perfection most admirable. Paintings were copied, actually
copied, on the looms, but however much the fact may be deplored that
tapestry had wandered far from its original days of grand simplicity,
it were unjust not to recognise the exquisite perfection of the manner
in vogue in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, and of the
perfection of the craftsman.
The pieces of Beauvais that are accessible to us are indeed charming
to live with, especially the verdures of Oudry on which he left the
trace of his talent, never omitting the characteristic fox or dog, or
ducks, or pheasants that give vital interest to a peep into the
enchanted woodland. At the same time the factory of Aubusson, and
looms in Flanders, were throwing upon the market a quantity of
verdures, of which the amateur must beware. Oudry verdures or outdoor
scenes are but few in model, and beautifully woven.
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
In the prosperity of Beauvais, ambition carried Oudry into a gay
rivalry with the Gobelins. Charles Coypel had gained fame by a set of
hangings in which scenes were taken from Don Quixote. Oudry asked
himself why he should not rival them at Beauvais. The result was a
similar series, but composed by Charles Natoire, the artist who had
drawn a set of _Antony and Cleopatra_ for the Gobelins. The same idea
extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well
as to the _Fables_. Thus originated a set familiar to those of us
nowadays who covet and who buy the rare old bits that the niggard hand
of the past accords to the seeker after the ancient.
Exquisite indeed are the hangings by the great interpreter of the
spirit of his time, Francois Boucher. His designs broke from the limit
of the Gobelins, and were woven at Beauvais with the care and skill
required for proper interpretation of his land of mythology. Such
flushed skies of light, such clean, soft trees waving against them and
such human elegance and beauty grouped beneath, have seldom been
reproduced in tapestry, and almost make one wonder if, after all, the
weavers of the Eighteenth Century were not right in copying a finished
painting rather than in interpreting a decorative cartoon. But such
thoughts border on heresy and schism; away with them.
Casanova, Leprince, and a host of others are tacked onto the list of
artists who painted models. We can no longer call them cartoons, so
changed is the mode for Beauvais. But Oudry and Boucher are
pre-eminent.
To the former, who was director as well as artist, is attributed the
fame of the factory and the resulting commercial success. The factory
had a house for selling its wares under the very nose of the Gobelins;
had another in the enemy's country, Leipzig. And kings were the
patrons of these, as we know through the royal collections in Italy,
and Stockholm, where the King of Sweden was an important collector.
It was in 1755 that Beauvais found itself without the support of its
leaders. Both Oudry and his partner in business matters, Besnier, had
died. And we are well on toward the time when kingly support was a
feeble and uncertain quantity. The factory lacked the inspiration and
patronage to continue its importance.
In a few years more fell the blight of the Revolution. The factory was
closed.
It re-opened again under new conditions, but its brilliant period was
past. Will the conditions recur that can again elevate to its former
state of perfection this factory that has given such keen delight,
whose ancient works are so prized by the amateur? It has given us
thrilling examples of the highly developed taste of tapestry weaving
of the Eighteenth Century, it has left us lovable designs in
miniature. We repulse the thought that these things are all of the
past. The factory still lives. Will not the Twentieth Century see a
restoration of its former prestige?
If it were only for the reproduction of the sets of furniture of the
style known as Louis XVI, the Beauvais loom would have sufficient
reason for existing at the present day. Scenes from Don Quixote,
however, and the pictured fables of La Fontaine which we see on old
chairs, seem to need age to ripen them. These sets, when made new,
shown in all the freshness and unsoiled colour, and unworn wool, and
unfaded silk do not give pleasure.
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY]
[Illustration: CHAIR COVERING
Beauvais Tapestry. First Empire]
But the familiar garlands and scrolls adapted from the Greek, that
were woven for the court of Marie Antoinette, these are ever old and
ever new, like all things vital. On a background of solid colour, pale
and tawny, is curved the foliated scroll to reach the length of a
sofa, and with this is associated garlands or sprays of flowers that
any flower-lover would worship. Nothing more graceful nor more
tasteful could be conceived, and by such work is the Beauvais factory
best known, and on such lines might it well continue.