Lot 1808 Dα

The tapestry presented here, "La Diseuse de bonne aventure", from the series "Jeux russiens" after cartoons by Jean Baptiste Leprince (1734 - 1781), was produced in Beauvais in around 1767, in the Charron and Menou manufactories. As late as 1782, one year after Leprince's death, a copy was made as a gift from the French King Louis XVI to the Chancellor of the Prince-Bishop of Basel (today Musée Jacquemart-André).

The same theme had already been produced in the Beauvais manufactory after a motif by François Boucher (1703 - 1770) for the "Italian Festivals" series. It is based on a painting by Boucher with a very similar composition now housed in the Châteaux de Versailles et Trianon.

Jean Baptiste Leprince chose a different characterisation for the figures: they are not dressed as French peasants as in Boucher's work, but instead wear Eastern European-looking clothes that could also be theatre costumes. The background was additionally supplemented by a tarpaulin thrown over the trees with a large wooden pram in front of it. At the lower right edge of the picture lies the sleeping infant, nestled among an arrangement of vegetables, chickens and sheep.

Jean Baptiste Le Prince, born in Metz in 1731, came from a family of gilders and sculptors and was a pupil of Boucher and Vien. He travelled through Italy, Finland, Lithuania, and Russia, where he stayed in Moscow and Siberia. From 1758 to 1763 he executed decorations for the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The trip to Russia inspired his future work as he brought back numerous drawings, which he used again and again and to which he owed his later fame.