79208 Late 19th Century Antique French Aubusson Tapestry, 06'00 x 08'10.
A lavish panorama of pastoral enchantment unfurls across this handwoven French Aubusson tapestry, a masterwork of wool and silk that breathes with the romantic spirit of the late 19th century. Rendered in the refined basse-lisse tradition, this textile evokes the opulent legacy of the Beauvais and Aubusson workshops, whose weavers wove not just threads but entire dreamscapes into their looms. Its composition is a verdant reverie—a garden of myth and memory, where luxuriant foliage unfurls like a symphony, and birds of paradise glide through woven trees that whisper of Edenic stillness and eternal spring.
The scene pulses with life and symbolism: peacocks preen amid flowering thickets, their plumage glinting subtly with silk highlights, symbols of regality and the incorruptible soul. A stork pauses at the river’s edge, bending into mirrored waters—a herald of birth and renewal—while parrots, exotic and alert, lend a touch of the marvelous to the scene. In the distance, a stone bridge arches gently over a meandering stream, drawing the eye toward the dreamlike château perched among golden hills. This architectural touch—rendered with softened precision—anchors the fantasy in the cultural memory of an idealized France, a land where courtly grace meets the cultivated wilderness.
The tapestry’s palette—burnished ochres, woodland greens, antique golds, earthy browns, and plum-dark shadows—has mellowed with age into a harmony of twilight tones. These colors, derived from vegetal dyes, now possess the softened radiance of a pastoral painting long kissed by candlelight and time. Silk threads woven into key details—feathers, floral crowns, and streams—lend quiet luster to the composition, catching the eye and elevating the tableau with painterly refinement. The border, composed of scrolling foliage and Renaissance-inspired ornament, forms an ornate frame that both contains and celebrates the wild serenity within.
As both object and image, this Aubusson tapestry stands as a testament to the enduring French pursuit of beauty—a celebration of nature reimagined through the lens of myth, memory, and mastery. Woven in an age that looked backward with longing and forward with elegance, it would have once adorned the salons of the Belle Epoque, casting its soft pastoral spell across richly paneled walls. Today, it remains a relic of woven grandeur—a luminous sanctuary of thread and vision, where the line between the real and the imagined blurs into a timeless, Arcadian dream.
- Abrash.
- Handwoven wool. Handwoven silk.
- Made in France.
- Measures: 06'00 x 08'10.
- Pile Height: 0.32 of an inch.
- Date: 1880's. Late 19th Century.
