Wall Panel with a Heron and a Parrot
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One of five panels depicting birds surrounded by blue decorative cartouches. In the lower half of the cartouche, a heron stands in a landscape with a river and plants. The rectangular cartouche is composed of C-scroll acanthus leaves and C-scroll husk garlands at the upper edge. A floral festoon hangs from a central foliate boss supporting a ring on which sits a squawking blue parrot. The side of the cartouche are composed of elongated husk garlands entwined with plants. The lower edge is composed of two C-scrolls flanking a low shell motif on a low plinth. Foliage spills over the edge of the landscape scene infront of the plinth.
Summer flowers and birds decorate eleven canvas panels attributed to the French ornamentalist painter, Alexis Peyrotte. Six panels show rose bushes on simple patches of ground (acc. nos 140.1996.1-6). Five are more complex, depicting birds surrounded by verdant cartouches (acc. nos 161.1996.1-5). Panels of elegant fowl, plants and rose bushes are combined in a similar fashion in a design for an octagonal boudoir traditionally attributed to Peyrotte, also at Waddesdon (acc. no. 1881).
A similar heron, framed by arching foliage, appears in the drawing (acc. no. 1881). As an interior decorator working in the Rococo idiom, Alexis Peyrotte contributed to several royal schemes: at Choisy-le-roi and Versaille in the 1740s, and at Fontainebleau, where he painted floral elements and allegorical trophies in the Salle du Conseil in 1753, alongside Carle van Loo. The panels at Waddesdon show the influence of the restrained neo-classical taste fashionable from the late 1750s on. The Waddesdon drawing (acc. no. 1881) has a similar transitional feel, and may have been a reworking of one of Peyrotte's decorative schemes made in the late 1760s or early 1770s. It was around this time when Jean-Baptiste Pillement's designs of fantastical birds and flowers became popular, although Pillement used chinoserie patterns to organise his designs, a feature lacking in the Waddesdon panels.
Peyrotte also produced satirical paintings of monkeys and birds, including turkeys, similar to those featured in the Waddesdon panels. Peyrotte's gouache of a monkey dressed as a Franciscan monk preaching to turkeys with a fox looking on, although very different in tone, shows a similar understanding of the decorative qualities of these birds (Sotheby's, New York, 25 January 2006, lot 145). A set of panels by Peyrotte mounted as a folding screen combine anthropomorphic monkeys with several water-birds, including herons (Waddesdon Manor, acc. no. 2168).
The panels originally decorated Dorothy de Rothschild's bedroom in St James's Place, London, bought around 1930, when they were considered to be in the style of Pillement. They were moved to Waddesdon in the mid 1990s. All of them except two concave panels (acc. nos 140.1996.5-6) have been installed into the panelling of the East Boudoir in the Bachelors' Wing. Conservation work carried out in 1997 revealed that the canvas surrounding the central designs had layers of different coloured paint, indicating that the panels had been used in several different interiors.
Phillippa Plock, 2012
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
1590 x 740
1560 x 710 - sight
Signature & date
not signed or dated
Provenance
- Acquired by James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957) for 23 St James's Place, London; inherited by his wife Dorothy de Rothschild (b.1895, d.1988); then to a Rothschild Family Trust.
Collection
- Waddesdon (Rothschild Family)
- On loan since 1996
Subjects
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Leaf Motifs/Acanthus Motifs
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Leaf Motifs
- Animals/Insects & Lower Animals/Shell
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Flowers
- Animals/Birds/Parrot
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Countryside
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Water
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Trees & Plants
- Animals/Birds/Heron
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Flower Motifs/Festoons
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Frames, Borders, Cartouches
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Fruit, Nut or Seed Motif
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Scroll Motifs
- Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Shell Motifs