Antique French Wallpaper Bouquets by Mader Frères of Paris, 1852

About this sheet

This original antique chromolithograph of 1852 shows two framed panels of French wallpaper by Mader Frères of Paris, each one a loose bouquet of garden flowers thrown across a pale ground. The left panel gathers tulips, chrysanthemums, convolvulus and sprays of lilac and forget me not. The right panel sets poppies, roses, anemones and a trailing honeysuckle against the same quiet ground. Both are printed in full color with the delicacy of a watercolor study, which is exactly the effect the Paris paper stainers were selling. The lettering beneath names the sheet as Paper Hangings, by Mader Freres, of Paris, with F. Smallfield as draftsman, M. Digby Wyatt as director and F. Bedford as lithographer, and the imprint gives the fifteenth of September 1852.

The plate comes from The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century, Matthew Digby Wyatt's record of the Great Exhibition of 1851, published in London by Day and Son, lithographers to the Queen, between 1851 and 1853 and dedicated by permission to Prince Albert. It was issued to subscribers in forty parts in printed paper wrappers, and the two volumes together carry about a hundred and sixty large folio plates. The project came from the publishers, who approached Wyatt soon after the exhibition opened wanting to show, on a large scale, what color printing could do for industrial education. Chromolithography was then new and costly, and each color on a sheet was printed from its own stone. Francis Bedford, John Sleigh, John Alfred Vinter and their colleagues drew and lithographed the plates under Wyatt's direction, and every plate carries its own imprint and date.

French paper hangings of this date were block printed by hand in dozens of colors and were widely admired at the 1851 exhibition, where they set the standard against which English manufacturers were measured. Mader Frères were among the best known of the Paris houses. The two panels read as a pair of flower studies rather than as a technical record. It frames well for a bedroom, a dressing room or a hallway, and it sits happily with botanical prints or in any room that already carries a floral paper or a chintz.

Complete sheet with the edges running straight and only slight wear to the lower left corner. Light overall age toning. Three small foxing spots in the margins. The printed image is clean and the color fresh.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.