Design for a Valance with a Grotesque Motif and Thin Garlands of Flowers and Leaves with a Scrolling Frame

Design for a Valance with a Grotesque Motif and Thin Garlands of Flowers and Leaves with a Scrolling Frame

Anonymous, French, 19th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rectangular sheet of paper with a design for a valance from the second half of the nineteenth century, inspired on the style of Louis XVI, which was characterized by thin bundles and garlands of flowers, trophies with pastoral attributes and pastel colors. The scale of this design is clearly not true to life and it is not unlikely that this drawing was made for a sample book of an upholsterer, to be shown to the customer as one of many different styles to choose from. The design is made up of a cream background decorated with ornamental scrolls of lilac, blue, and white color, and garlands of flowers and leaves of various tones of pink, carmine, yellow, and green. The upper part of the valance is decorated with a grotesque motif of blue color, decorated with garlands of flowers, and flanked by ornamental scrolls of white color on the sides and above. Above the grotesque, the frame of the garland contains a small shell motif in lilac color, and is decorated with accents in tones of yellow and ocre to simulate gold.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for a Valance with a Grotesque Motif and Thin Garlands of Flowers and Leaves with a Scrolling FrameDesign for a Valance with a Grotesque Motif and Thin Garlands of Flowers and Leaves with a Scrolling FrameDesign for a Valance with a Grotesque Motif and Thin Garlands of Flowers and Leaves with a Scrolling FrameDesign for a Valance with a Grotesque Motif and Thin Garlands of Flowers and Leaves with a Scrolling FrameDesign for a Valance with a Grotesque Motif and Thin Garlands of Flowers and Leaves with a Scrolling Frame

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.