vc-59-61

9 panels
“Fete du roi aux Champs-Elysees”
Manufactured by Velay, Paris 1825
Height: 74 inches (6 feet 2 inches) Length: 419 inches (34 feet 11 inches)

VC-59-61

French wallpaper, 9 panels
“Fete du roi aux Champs-Elysees”
Manufactured by Velay, Paris 1825
Lit: Odile Nouvel-Kammerer, Papiers Peints Panoramiques, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Flammarion,
no. 33 Rejouissances Populaires aux Champs-Elysees a l’Occasion de la Fete du Roi
Height: 74 inches (6 feet 2 inches) Length: 419 inches (34 feet 11 inches)

In the first decades of the nineteenth century scenic wallpaper became an extraordinarily popular medium through which fashionable European society could demonstrate an interest in the natural world and man and society’s place in that world. In the age of Romanticism, scenic wallpaper, used to adorn the public rooms of one’s gentile domestic environment, allowed the viewer to be surrounded by and carried into an idealized landscape that served as an expansive stage within which an array of lyrical scenes would be set. This type of decoration traces its roots to late eighteen century murals,
renaissance tapestries, and ancient wall paintings. However technical innovation in the printing industry, combined with a fashion for appropriating sensational ideological currents (be they based in mythology, exoticism, high drama, etc.) prompted scenic wallpaper to emerge as a unique and highly prized art form.
Printed on long sheets of mechanically manufactured paper (a nascent industry itself in the early nineteenth century), scenic wall paper utilized numerous carefully inked blocks of hand-carved wood to gradually articulate the final image. More often than not, well-known etchings and engravings provided compositional templates from which scenic wallpaper designs were derived.Although the original title of this charming festival scene is not known, it features numerous vignettes of elegant revelers celebrating the “fêtes du roi aux Champs-Élysée”, initionally published and printed circa 1825 by the Velay factory in Paris. Each panel has cotton secondary support, and is mounted to wooden stretchers.

Lit: Odile Nouvel-Kammerer, Papiers Peints Panoramiques, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Flammarion,
no. 33 Rejouissances Populaires aux Champs-Elysees a l’Occasion de la Fete du Roi