François Boucher was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century.
Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may be visible. In tapestry weaving, weft yarns are typically discontinuous; the artisan interlaces each coloured weft back and forth in its own small pattern area. It is a plain weft-faced weave having weft threads of different colours worked over portions of the warp to form the design.
Charles Le Brun was a French painter, physiognomist, art theorist, and a director of several art schools of his time. As court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him "the greatest French artist of all time", he was a dominant figure in 17th-century French art and much influenced by Nicolas Poussin.
The Gobelins Manufactory is a historic tapestry factory in Paris, France. It is located at 42 avenue des Gobelins, near Les Gobelins métro station in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. It was originally established on the site as a medieval dyeing business by the family Gobelin.
Adam Frans van der Meulen or Adam-François van der Meulen was a Flemish painter and draughtsman who was particularly known for his scenes of military campaigns and conquests. Van der Meulen also painted portraits, hunting scenes, paintings of chateaux and landscapes. He created designs for prints and cartoons for tapestries.
Jean François de Troy was a French Rococo easel and fresco painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer. One of France's leading history painters in his time, he was equally successful with his decorative paintings, genre scenes and portraits. He was the inventor of the tableaux de modes, which attempted to provide a spirited portrayal of contemporary fashions, pastimes and manners.
The Louis XV style or Louis Quinze is a style of architecture and decorative arts which appeared during the reign of Louis XV. From 1710 until about 1730, a period known as the Régence, it was largely an extension of the Louis XIV style of his great-grandfather and predecessor, Louis XIV. From about 1730 until about 1750, it became more original, decorative and exuberant, in what was known as the Rocaille style, under the influence of the King's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. It marked the beginning of the European Rococo movement. From 1750 until the King's death in 1774, it became more sober, ordered, and began to show the influences of Neoclassicism.
The Savonnerie manufactory was the most prestigious European manufactory of knotted-pile carpets, enjoying its greatest period c. 1650–1685; the cachet of its name is casually applied to many knotted-pile carpets made at other centers. The manufactory had its immediate origins in a carpet manufactory established in a former soap factory on the Quai de Chaillot downstream of Paris in 1615 by Pierre DuPont, who was returning from the Levant.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a French Rococo painter, engraver, and tapestry designer. He is particularly well known for his naturalistic pictures of animals and his hunt pieces depicting game.
Pieter Boel or Peeter Boel was a Flemish painter, printmaker and tapestry designer. He specialised in lavish still lifes and animal paintings. He moved to Paris, where he worked in the gobelin factory and became a painter to the king. Pieter Boel revolutionized animal painting by working directly from live animals in a natural setting. He thus arrived at representations of animals showing them in their natural, characteristic poses. He had many followers in France.
Charles-Joseph Natoire was a French painter in the Rococo manner, a pupil of François Lemoyne and director of the French Academy in Rome, 1751–1775. Considered during his lifetime the equal of François Boucher, he played a prominent role in the artistic life of France.
Louis de Silvestre was a French portrait and history painter. He was court painter to King Augustus II of Poland, and director of the Royal Academy of Arts in Dresden.
The Beauvais Manufactory is a historic tapestry factory in Beauvais, France. It was the second in importance, after the Gobelins Manufactory, of French tapestry workshops that were established under the general direction of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV. Whereas the royal Gobelins Manufactory executed tapestries for the royal residences and as ambassadorial gifts, the manufacture at Beauvais remained a private enterprise. Beauvais specialised in low-warp tapestry weaving, although the letters patent of 1664, authorising the company and offering royal protection, left the field open for the production of high-warp tapestry as well.
Charles-Antoine Coypel was a French painter, art commentator, and playwright. He became court painter to the French king and director of the Académie Royale. He inherited the title of Garde des tableaux et dessins du roi, a function which combined the role of director and curator of the king's art collection. He was mainly active in Paris.
Nicolas Desportes (1718–1787) was a French painter, specialising in representations of animals and hunting scenes.
Jacques Dumont called "le Romain", was a French history and portrait painter, called "the Roman" from his youthful residence at Rome and to distinguish him from other artists named Dumont, notably his fellow-academician Jean-Joseph Dumont. His father, Pierre, was a court sculptor to the Duke of Lorraine and his elder brother, François (1687/88—1726), was also a sculptor. In addition to his paintings he practiced etching, in which medium he reproduced some of his paintings and, for example, Servandoni's view of the fireworks celebrating the marriage of the dauphin, 1730. Though comparatively unknown today, he enjoyed celebrity and a long, successful career.
Nicasius Bernaerts, Monsù Nicasio or simply Nicasius(1620, Antwerp – 1678, Paris) was a Flemish painter of animals, hunting pieces and flowers who had an international career in Italy and Paris. He worked for the French court and provided tapestry designs to the Gobelins Manufactory.
Brussels tapestry workshops produced tapestry from at least the 15th century, but the city's early production in the Late Gothic International style was eclipsed by the more prominent tapestry-weaving workshops based in Arras and Tournai. In 1477 Brussels, capital of the duchy of Brabant, was inherited by the house of Habsburg; and in the same year Arras, the prominent center of tapestry-weaving in the Low Countries, was sacked and its tapestry manufacture never recovered, and Tournai and Brussels seem to have increased in importance.
The Louis XIV style or Louis Quatorze, also called French classicism, was the style of architecture and decorative arts intended to glorify King Louis XIV and his reign. It featured majesty, harmony and regularity. It became the official style during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), imposed upon artists by the newly established Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture and the Académie royale d'architecture. It had an important influence upon the architecture of other European monarchs, from Frederick the Great of Prussia to Peter the Great of Russia. Major architects of the period included François Mansart, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Robert de Cotte, Pierre Le Muet, Claude Perrault, and Louis Le Vau. Major monuments included the Palace of Versailles, the Grand Trianon at Versailles, and the Church of Les Invalides (1675–1691).
The Don Quixote tapestry series is a popular series of 18th century mural-scale tapestries illustrating scenes from the Miguel de Cervantes novel, Don Quixote. The series was woven at the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris from 1714 to 1794, during which they were the most frequently reproduced series in the manufactory with over 200 panels woven. Their design marked the emergence of elaborate alentour borders in tapestries.
