Regency Wool and Silk Threadwork Picture: Still Life of Fruit With Birds

Details

Description

Regency Woolwork Still Life of Fruit with a Bird
Circa 1830

A charming Regency woolwork picturing an abundant still life … Read more Regency Woolwork Still Life of Fruit with a Bird
Circa 1830

A charming Regency woolwork picturing an abundant still life of fruit tumbling from an overturned wicker basket, worked in colored wools on a brown felt ground. Peaches, a netted melon, bunches of green and purple grapes, strawberries, and trailing red and white currants are built up in padded, raised stitches that give the fruit a wonderfully tactile, almost three-dimensional relief, framed by leaves and curling vine tendrils. A pale bird perches on a branch at the upper left, leaning toward the fruit, the whole arranged above a suggestion of a table or mossy bank. Full of texture and warm color, it's a lovely piece for a wall of botanical or folk art, a dining room, or a cozy study. Presented in a molded dark-stained frame with a gilt beaded slip.

Dimensions
Framed Height: 19 inches (48.3 cm)
Framed Width: 25 inches (63.5 cm)
Framed Depth: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Provenance
Private American collection

Condition
Good. Now glazed with museum-grade UV-protective glass.

Historical Context
Pictorial woolwork of this kind belongs to the tradition of accomplished domestic needlework practiced by women in the late Georgian and Regency periods. Worked freehand rather than from a printed chart, the maker built up the fruit in padded, raised stitches to achieve the naturalistic relief so prized at the time. Abundant fruit still lifes, often enlivened by birds, drew on the seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painted tradition and carried connotations of plenty and hospitality. Displayed as parlor ornaments, such pictures rarely survive with their color this well preserved — the wools being prone to fading — which the new museum-grade glazing is intended to protect. A small curiosity survives on the reverse: the picture was backed with a reused eighteenth-century sheet inscribed Two Nymphs Sporting &c, from Zuccarelli, with old sale notations recording it as lot 3 at fifteen shillings. The sheet had evidently served first as a wrapper for a print after Francesco Zuccarelli (1702–1788), the Tuscan landscape painter and founding Royal Academician, before being pressed into use behind the needlework — an engaging fragment of the picture's later history.

(Ref: NY11162-ncmc) See less