Posted on 06/04/2007 6:23:52 PM PDT by blam
Tapestry reveals Tudor country idyll
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:02am BST 05/06/2007
One of the greatest tapestries made in Elizabethan England has been rediscovered in America after it disappeared almost a century ago following a blunder by a prominent British art historian.
The tapestry represents an idyll of sixteenth century country life
The giant hanging, measuring 15 ft by 6ft and made in the 1580s, with an idealised image of country life shows that wealthy Tudors had much the same aspirations to own a beautiful part of the countryside as their counterparts today.
A fantasy palace - believed to have been inspired by a 16th century image of King Solomon's Palace - sits on an island in the middle of the tapestry surrounded by parkland.
A hunting party gallops through woodland glades full of wildlife, swans swim across a lake and a man accompanied by his hunting dogs takes a pot shot with his ancient blunderbuss at some ducks.
Now for sale in London for £1 million, the tapestry, made from wool and silk, has been found hanging in the home of one of California's wealthiest families but with its history and maker unknown.
The London dealer Simon Franses has identified it as coming from the workshop of William Sheldon, a contemporary and close neighbour of William Shakespeare and regarded as one of the greatest tapestry makers in 16th century England.
A detail from the tapestry shows a hunting expedition
Sheldon, also known for making cushion covers and tapestry maps of the English counties, founded his workshop at Barcheston, Warwickshire, and employed highly skilled Protestant craftsmen who had fled from religious persecution in the Netherlands.
Mr Franses says that the tapestry matches other Sheldon pieces stylistically and that he is certain of its origin. But nothing though is known of its history until 1909 when the dealer and art historian Lord Duveen, who made a fortune by exporting art from Britain to rich Americans, put it into an auction in the United States.
Research by Mr Franses has found that it was not catalogued as a work by Sheldon and that the normally shrewd Lord Duveen had missed a trick.
Mr Franses, who is selling the hanging at the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair on June 14, found that it had recently been hanging in the home of a member of San Fransisco's Crocker family, whose success in railroads made them one of the West Coast's wealthiest dynasties.
Mr Franses said yesterday: "It is one of the most important Sheldon tapestries to have survived. It is a stupendous thing. We knew about it from an illustration in the (1909) sale catalogues but we didn't know where it was."
Interesting article.
Also interesting Sheldon found Walloons & Dutch, in Warwickshire as most had settled in Suffolk and Norfolk.
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