Valance thumbnail 1
Valance thumbnail 2
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Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Europe 1600-1815, Room 1

Valance

ca. 1790 (made)
Artist/Maker
Unknown
Place of origin
England (made)

This valance, which was probably used as part of a set of bed hangings, is made with a printed cotton commemorating the Fall of the Bastille in 1789, at the start of the French Revolution. It is thought to have been printed in England for export to France, and the reference to events of August 1789 suggest that it was printed soon after.


Object details

Categories
Textiles
Furniture
Object type
Valance
Materials and techniques
Plate printed cotton
Cotton
Plate Printing
Brief description
printed cotton, about 1790, English; Plate printed, The Fall of the Bastille
Physical description
Valance of cotton plate printed in purple. There are two main scenes : the Storming of the Bastille, and a fictive tomb of Louis XVI, celebrating France's liberty; the scenes are depicted in a sketch-like manner, and their designer or source has not yet been identified. There is a background of scrolling ribbons and flowers, wheat ears, and fleurs de lys, with inscriptions in French and Latin.

Signed in the print 'GORDON SCULP' and 'H.M.& Co.'. Lined, with top and bottom edges bound with linen tape.
Dimensions
  • Height: 345mm
  • Width: 1130mm
Measured by Conservation 2012
Credit line
Given by The Hon Mrs L Lindley
Object history
Lent to the British Museum exhibition 'Britain and the French Revolution' May to September 1989.
Lent to the exhibition 'La Revolution Francais - Version Anglais' at Musee de la Revolution Francais, Vizille, France, June - September 1990.
Production
Assumed to have been printed in England for export to France. There are no conclusive grounds for an English identification.
Subject depicted
French Revolution
Place depicted
Bastille
Summary
This valance, which was probably used as part of a set of bed hangings, is made with a printed cotton commemorating the Fall of the Bastille in 1789, at the start of the French Revolution. It is thought to have been printed in England for export to France, and the reference to events of August 1789 suggest that it was printed soon after.
Bibliographic references
  • V&A Loan Exhibition of English Chintz, 1960, cat. no. 180
  • The Shadow of the Guillotine : Britain and the French Revolution, by David Bindman, British Museum, 1989, cat. no. 33.
  • From Edith Standen, English Washing Furnitures, MMA Bulletin, Vol XXIII, no. 3, Nov. 1964 : 'Why, from the mid- I760s, customers wanted current theatrical scenes, and why, from about 1775, they wanted pictures of contemporary events around their beds and across their windows is much harder to account for. A similar phenomenon occurred in France, where theatrical and historical scenes appeared about a decade after they did in England. Comparable French toiles, which begin with naval victories, become more frequent after 1789, when they are concerned with episodes of the Revolution. Certainly here one senses a growing involvement of the people as a whole with the political scene, though manufacturers must have lost heavily when they immortalized occasions of the most transitory validity; the toile showing Louis XVI in his brief role as a constitutional monarch, "restorateur de la Liberte," would have been hastily ripped from many a bed after the flight to Varennes. An English manufacturer of left-wing sympathies produced a similar subject showing the French king as well as the fall of the Bastille, with a misspelled inscription about "Louis XVI regeneratel [sic] de la liberte frangois," and must have also regretted it. ' This article is illustrated with scenes from the piece of the textile in the MMA, which has a third scene showing the King under a canopy, apparently receiving Liberty (?).
Collection
Textiles and Fashion Collection
Accession number
T.63-1936

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Record createdJune 24, 2009
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O356092/valance-unknown/
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