Wall Covering, "The Pheasants" from the "Vatican Verdures" Series (after 1799): Art, History and Details

Wall Covering, "The Pheasants" from the "Vatican Verdures" Series (after 1799) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Démosthène Dugourc (French, 1749–1825); Camille Pernon & Cie (French).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

France developed a thriving silk industry in Lyon with the goal of becoming the fashion center of Europe. Employment soared to some 20,000 workers by the time of the French Revolution in 1789. Designs changed annually, colors established new fashions, and spectacular silks were produced during the late 1700s. Dugourc, an architect who studied in Italy, became a renowned textile designer for Camille Pernon & Cie, purveyors to King Louis XVI (reigned 1774–92). He created this elaborate, balanced composition as part of elegant wall coverings for the Casita del Labrador, near Madrid. Dugourc named the series after frescos by Raphael in the Vatican.

Object facts

• Title: Wall Covering, "The Pheasants" from the "Vatican Verdures" Series
• Date: after 1799
• Creator attribution: Jean-Démosthène Dugourc (French, 1749–1825); Camille Pernon & Cie (French)
• Culture: France
• Type: Textile
• Technique: lampas (satin weave and plain weave variant), brocaded, embroidered (chain, satin stitches); silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 237 x 45.7 cm (93 5/16 x 18 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1935.237

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Underhill, Gertrude. "Two Eighteenth-Century French Silks." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 23, no. 3 (1936).
• Los Angeles County Museum. 2000 Years of Silk Weaving: An Exhibition Sponsored by the Los Angeles County Museum in Collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. 1944.
• Weibel, Adèle Coulin. Two Thousand Years of Textiles; The Figured Textiles of Europe and the Near East. New York: Published for the Detroit Institute of Arts [by] Pantheon Books, 1952.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.