Pair Of Wallpapers, France, 18th Century

- Pair of framed wallpapers forming a suite, French creation of the 18th century.

- These wallpapers reflect the 18th-century taste for an "idealized China" that Western artists knew only through imported art objects. The works produced are thus the result of an artistic hybridization that gave rise to representations of Chinese scenes through the eyes and hands of Western artisans. While the technique here is distinctly European (laid paper joined together, intaglio printing, brushwork), the creator of these wallpapers borrowed the style of Chinese paintings, notably using an overhead perspective faithful to traditional Chinese perspective, rendered in successive layers of planes. The entire landscape is thus traversed: the viewer sees a rocky outcrop, crosses it, and glimpses, beyond a pagoda, the continuing stream, and can distinguish each scene, even the most distant ones. This imagined Chinese landscape is enlivened by tender vignettes, including a fishing scene, a scene of someone reading a scroll, and a woman seen from a pagoda window drawing back the curtains. These scenes of daily life are embellished with exotic animals such as numerous birds with colorful plumage and a baby elephant in the lower right corner. The treatment, with its colorful accents and stylized motifs, like the cherry tree in full bloom before the pagoda, lends this landscape a certain tenderness and poetry.

The refinement of these wallpapers is distinguished by the delicacy of the design, the detailed references to Chinese culture, such as the costumes, and the beautiful freshness of the colors, notably the coral red highlights that punctuate the landscapes with bright, luminous touches that are very pleasing to the eye.

- Some wear, minor losses in the upper sections, and halos are present.

- Dimensions of one frame: Height: 176.8 cm, Width: 66.7 cm