A Brussels "Fins Teniers" tapestry with a harbour scene
A wool and silk thread tapestry with linen backing, depicting men on a harbour filling barrels and a sailing ship in the background with an illusionistic border in the manner of the Gobelins factory. With Brussels city mark to the lower right and signed "P.V.D. BORGHT". Extensive restoration, parts of the border replaced, cleaned. H 270, W 215 cm.
Pieter van der Borght, mid-18th C.
Upon the death of the last surviving member of the van den Borght family on 13th January 1794, he “carried the finest of the arts in Flanders and Brabant to the grave with him”, wrote Goebel in his standard work on tapestries in 1923. The van den Borght family were the last great weavers in the city of Brussels, in fact all of Flanders, and were also one of the last to keep the art of tapestry weaving alive. The grandfather Jakob van den Borght maintained seven looms between 1703 and 1707, whilst his son Jasper (Peter's father) kept only five. Peter (1712 - 1763) and his brother Frans were forced to react to this loss in commissions. Peter achieved this by specialising in the then fashionable contemporary motifs such as series after Teniers. A signed series is currently in Austrian state ownership, and several other signed works with peasant or merchant navy scenes can be found in private ownership.
Literature
For the van den Borght family cf.: Goebel, Wandteppiche, part I. Die Niederlande vol. I, Leipzig 1923, p. 398 ff.
A similar tapestry with an identical border and a scene after Teniers signed by the brother Frans van den Borght in: Goebel, part I, vol. II, illus. 565.