Fragments of an incomplete cartoon for cotton printing: La Course au Sanglier
Classification
Drawing
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Gift of Bridget Mahon
Accession Number
1898-21-5-c
About this artwork
Research in Progress
Art Historical Context
Claude-Louis Desrais’s “Fragments of an incomplete cartoon for cotton printing: La Course au Sanglier” offers a rare glimpse into the creative process behind eighteenth-century textile design. Created in 1785 by the French artist, the surviving pieces were intended as a full-scale preparatory drawing, or “cartoon,” for printing a hunting scene onto cotton fabric. The title evokes the excitement of a boar chase, a popular subject that would have appealed to the period’s taste for lively, narrative patterns on clothing and furnishings. In the 1780s, France’s textile industry was flourishing, an...