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’être 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 Molière’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.

[See larger image]

BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XIV