French Greenery Tapestry Manufacture Royale Aubusson 18th After Jean-baptiste Oudry - No. 1570

This magnificent verdure tapestry from the Royal Manufacture of Aubusson, 18th century, created after a cartoon by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755), brilliantly illustrates the refinement and poetic spirit of French textile art under the Ancien Régime. It belongs to the great tradition of so-called “verdure” tapestries, highly prized during the 17th and 18th centuries for their soothing tones, botanical richness, and their ability to transform interiors into lush gardens woven into the very walls.

The work unfolds as a pastoral and animal scene where nature, idealized and luxuriant, takes center stage. The eye is immediately drawn to the density of the vegetation: tall trees with powerful trunks and abundant foliage rise across the full height of the piece, their crowns rendered in a rich palette of greens, enlivened with bluish and golden hues that showcase the extraordinary mastery of Aubusson’s dyers. The landscape opens into a delicately sketched distance, where rolling hills and village architecture appear, creating a subtle sense of atmospheric depth.

In the foreground, the scene comes alive through the presence of animals depicted with the naturalistic precision characteristic of Oudry, the celebrated animal painter and director of the Manufacture des Gobelins. An elegant heron stands by a stream, while birds flutter in the air. Nearby, a lively group is depicted: a leaping dog, a majestic rooster, and a fox who seems to have captured its prey. The tapestry thus becomes a woven fable, blending naturalist observation with moral allegory, in the spirit of La Fontaine’s tales, which Oudry also illustrated.

The border, richly adorned, frames the central scene with refined floral decoration: bouquets of roses and vegetal garlands unfold against a golden background, enhancing the impression of abundance and preciousness. This border serves both as a transition and as a framing device, accentuating the effect of a mural painting typical of the great tapestries of the period.

This exceptional piece demonstrates the technical and artistic excellence of the royal Aubusson workshops, whose reputation extended throughout Europe. The fine weaving, the subtlety of the chromatic gradations, and the balance of the composition reflect a savoir-faire handed down through generations and brought to perfection in the 18th century. Both decorative and didactic in inspiration, this tapestry embodies the Enlightenment’s taste for nature, pastoral scenes, and moral fables.

Through its size, ornamental richness, and the quality of its execution, this verdure tapestry after Jean-Baptiste Oudry stands as a rare collector’s piece, uniting decorative beauty with symbolic depth. It invites the viewer to step into a world where nature, sublimated by the art of weaving, becomes at once décor, stage, and a mirror of human passions.