Pair of Louis XV screens

Period: Louis XV, circa 1734-1738

Manufacture: Royale de la Savonnerie, after drawings by François Desportes

Provenance:

• Collection of Madame Dubernet Douine at the Château de Boissière,

• Collection of Hubert de Saint-Senoch at the Pavillon de Bidaine.

Pair of Louis XV screens (contd)

Bibliography: « The Savonnerie », Pierre Verlet, Catalogue of the Rothschild collection in Waddesdon Manor, p. 85 and ill. p. 301.

Size:

Height 145 cm. 4 ft. 9 in.

Width (of each leaf) 65 cm. 25 1/2 in.
A pair of screens in Savonnerie.
Each of the four leaves is adorned with birds and animals on a blue background, with brown for the decorative frames.  The decoration consists of eagles, owls, parrots, ducks and pheasants. The background is decorated with foliage, rivers, flowers, cornucopia and still lifes.  Five of the decorative frames are embellished with arabesques and foliage and the other three with leaves and flowers.  The two panels depicting parrots are repeated at the ends of the two screens.

Identical screens can be seen in the Nissim de Camond Museum (cat. n° 141), the National Collections Nationales and the Rothschild collection.

The drawings for these different panels are the work of  Desportes. The watercolour study for the two birds of prey is in the archives of Sèvres.

These panels were woven at the Manufacture de la Savonnerie between 1719 and 1738.

About 100 leaves for this type of screen have been produced.  Most of the screens were made up of six leaves and some of them were embellished on both sides.  It is estimated that a maximum of about a dozen screens of this model were created during this period.

Verlet makes a distinction between big screens designed for ceremonial rooms, mainly anti-chambers, which were usually quite simple, and small screens intended for private rooms and therefore more richly decorated, sometimes matching the furniture in the room.