Cartoon for the Back of a Tapestry Settee

This to-scale model for the back of a sofa, or settee, would have served weavers at French textile manufactories, most likely at Beauvais or Aubusson. Ancient grotesque wall decoration inspired the advanced style of Neoclassical ornament and can be associated with designers such as Jean Démosthène Dugourc (1749–1825). The trompe l’oeil bunting along the edge mimicked the complex upholstery of other settees during his period that made the most of the large rectangular planes of Louis XVI furniture forms as a pictorial surface. The motifs—including freshly harvested grapes in the medallion and the bunting’s pattern of panther skin, an attribute of Bacchus—indicate that it was intended to allegorize Autumn.