ART TH.E greater part of the unique and priceless exhibition
of French tapestries which was first shown in Paris in the summer and autumn of last year is now to be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Our most grateful thanks are due to the French Government, the Arts Council and the museum authorities for making this possible. The tapestries, which were secreted during the war years, have been brought together prior to dispersal to their various owners, and it is unlikely that such a concentration of masterpieces of the first import- ance will ever again be seen. Some of them are seldom to be viewed even in France, and though a number of the hangings shown in Paris are not included at the Victoria and Albert, the present exhibition is in one or two respects even more complete than its predecessor.
The famous fourteenth-century series of The Apocalypse, from Angers, without doubt the most important mediaeval tapestry in existence, besides its wealth of historical interest and the depth and sincerity of its religious feeling, shows, despite its origins in twelfth- century illumination, an instinctive grasp of the potentialities and limitations of the medium which was scarcely to be surpassed by subsequent weavers. All the early work—La Vie Seigneuriale, the Legend of St. Stephen and the well-known Dame a la Licorrie—is delightful and charming, the last series, with its delicate allegories of the five senses, surely reaching the consummation of romantic mediaevalism. Upon these innocent fancies—the flower-bespattered grounds, the birds of the air and the playful beasts of the field, the dogs and the monkeys and the leverets, all realised in the decorative linear formalisations of Gothic with an elegant boldness, with the paradoxical combination of splendour and refinement to which tapestry so lends itself—one may watch the gradual and not very happy impact of the Renaissance. From the middle of the sixteenth century the increasingly luxurious note resulting from new technical control, is allied to a more worldly superficiality. The great historical and allegorical compositions of the Gobelins factory, designed to mirror le Roi Soleil, are of unparalleled opulence ; but the new tendency to vie with the painted picture—a tendency which led Oudry in the following century to increase the number of tints at the weaver's dis- posal to more than to,000—led also to decadence and the final degeneration of the eighteen-hundreds, a period over which the ex- hibition happily draws a veil.
The modern revival, centred on Aubusson and associated primarily with Lurcat and Saint-Saens reaches back directly to the bold decorative invention of the mediaeval work. It is strong in design, exciting in colour. A simplified technique, based on a relatively small range of tints and a coarse texture resulting from the use of heavier thread, accords with contemporary taste. M. H. MIDDLETON.
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