Francis Barlow – Firebacks

A garden comprising paths criss-crossing between trees and shrubs with fountains at the intersections of the paths had originally been conceived by the garden designer André le Nôtre, the artist Charles le Brun and the writer Charles Perrault for the chateau at Vaux-le-Vicomte, which had belonged to Nicolas Fouquet, one of Louis XIV’s principal ministers, but after his arrest, trial and imprisonment, the project was put in abeyance. At Perrault’s suggestion it was resurrected when Louis wanted something in the grounds of his palace at Versailles to educate and entertain his young son, also Louis, who was later known as the Grand Dauphin.

*Le Labyrinthe de Versailles by Jacques Bailly, after Sébastien le Clerc*

Labyrinte de Versailles by Charles Perrault 1677

Designed by le Nôtre, who supervised its construction, the idea was that each fountain would illustrate a fable by Aesop or by Jean de la Fontaine and that a text in verse would be placed next to the fountain to provide a clue to the fable depicted. Building began in 1672 and took five years, many skilled craftsmen creating the 333 statues of animals for the 39 fountains. The Labyrinthe survived for less than a century, though, being replaced in 1775 by a garden in the English style for Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI.

At the Labyrinthe’s completion, a book was compiled by Charles Perrault which included an engraving of each of the fountains by Sébastien le Clerc accompanied by an explanatory text by Perrault and the verses that had been written by the poet Isaac de Benserade. A special edition containing paintings of le Clerc’s pictures and of Benserade’s verses was prepared by Jacques Bailly.

*‘Les Cannes et le petit Barbet’ by Jacques Bailly, after Sébastien Le Clerc and Isaac de Benserade (Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais)*

The verse translates as : This barbet is after these ducks, but through them he has learned that some desires are sometimes as vain as they are profane, and that one does not always get what one wants.

*1724 fireback depicting a scene adapted from ‘Les Cannes et le Barbet’ (Welsh National History Museum)*

So what has all this got to do with firebacks? The 38th fountain, though numbered 39 when an extra fountain was included, depicted a fable entitled ‘Les Cannes et le petit Barbet’ – The Ducks and the little Barbet. This is not one of the canon of Aesop’s fables nor is it one that was penned by Fontaine; in fact its authorship is not known. Perhaps it was written by Charles Perrault who was later to establish a reputation as the author of children’s stories such as Mother Goose, Cinderella and The Sleeping Beauty. The link with firebacks is that the pictorial scene on one of the castings first made in 1724 and bearing a pious inscription in Welsh was adapted from Sébastien le Clerc’s engraving of this fountain. The pattern-maker reduced the number of ducks with only one spouting the water and omitted the Barbet, but he included two birds flying over the fountain, which were copied from illustrations by the English wildlife painter and etcher Francis Barlow.

*Watercolour of the lost fireback pattern (Hastings Museum)*

The pattern for this fireback is the subject of a watercolour in the collection at Hastings Museum, an inscription on the back indicating that the pattern had been at Mayfield in Sussex, although the fireback will not have been made there as none of the furnaces in that parish were still in operation as late as 1724. One cannot help but wonder if the pattern still survives in someone’s possession.

The pictorial decoration on late-17th and early-18th century British firebacks that aped the German backs made in the Siegerland for the Dutch market encompassed many themes. Most were allegorical scenes depicting the planets, continents or classical deities, all originally the work of continental artists. Half a dozen firebacks in the series made in 1724, which have designs of arrangements of flowers in various vases, may even have been inspired by similar decoration on oriental ceramics, then starting to be imported from China and Japan. Whoever carved the patterns for these castings drew upon an international range of illustrative sources.

*‘The Decoy’ by Francis Barlow (destroyed by fire at Clandon Park, Surrey, in 2015)*

One source, however, was of native origin. Francis Barlow (c.1626-1704) was born in Lincolnshire and trained as a painter and etcher of birds and animals, for which he became much appreciated. In his lifetime he became well-known for book illustration, and in particular of an edition of Æsop’s Fables published in 1666. Later he devised political cartoons satirising the Dutch, with whom Britain was at war in the 1670s, and the Popish Plot fraudulently alleged by Titus Oates. Many of his etchings were copied by other artists to form sets of engravings.

*Fireback of 1724 with peacock design after Wenceslaus Hollar*

It is from engravings of Barlow’s etchings that the central elements of the two smallest firebacks in the series designed in 1724 were created. Both are of bird subjects, a peacock and a heron, and in both instances the depictions have been derived from engravings of Barlow’s work by the Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77), who lived and worked in England from 1637. Barlow’s study of a group of peacocks is undated but probably comes from the early part of his career. As in engravings of etchings generally, Hollar’s copy shows the scene in reverse. The pattern-maker has focused on the central bird for his design to the exclusion even of most of its tail feathers, the shape of the fireback precluding use of the landscape format of the original illustration. Sadly the only image of the fireback that is available is of a worn copy and some of the detail has suffered from the inevitable damage of regular exposure to fire.

*‘Herons’ engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, after Francis Barlow*

*Fireback of 1724 with heron design after Wenceslaus Hollar* *(Guildford Museum, Surrey)*

The fireback showing the image of the heron, which comes from the same set of Barlow’s etchings as that of the peacock, has similarly concentrated on the main element of Hollar’s engraving, which like the peacock formed part of his Diversae avium species collection. The pattern-maker has even retained the hapless frog caught in the heron’s beak.

*Fireback of 1724 showing birds by Francis Barlow (National Museum of Wales)*

While carvers of patterns for firebacks in this period generally copied or adapted single illustrations for their subjects, and this included the two pictures by Barlow above, they also made use of details from his output as elements within their other designs. In Hollar’s engraving of the herons, one of them is shown flying. Barlow himself was not averse to reusing his own images of birds in several of his paintings and etchings; the same heron appears in the painting from Clandon House. The maker of the pattern for another fireback in the 1724 series has included the flying heron in a scene derived from a picture by Charles Perrault primarily depicting a fountain formerly in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, as well as a flying duck that can also be seen on the Clandon painting.

*Early-18th century fireback of an allegory of Europe, with flying heron by Francis Barlow (Canons Ashby, Northants.)*

*Late-17th century fireback with Venus and Cupid, and flying heron by Francis Barlow (Horsham Museum, Sussex)*

That flying heron also appears on a fireback in the series identified by the monogram SHR in which a queen, possibly modelled on Queen Anne, but depicted as an allegory of the continent of Europe, is shown in a chariot being drawn across a parapet by a pair of horses. Allegorical figures in chariots representing the continents* originally appeared as a set of playing cards designed for Louis XIV by the Florentine artist Stefano della Bella, and the heron is also on another fireback in the series showing the figure of Africa. The identical bird reappears on a third fireback from the SHR workshop, this time flying above Venus with Cupid, as an allegory of the planet which bears her name. This fireback had been noted as early as 1699. The origin of its design was a set of engravings of the planets by Jan Sadeler from paintings by Marten de Vos dated 1585.

Two other birds on this fireback of the same period may also have been copied or inspired by Francis Barlow’s pictures. The central feature is a sea serpent fountain in imitation of a design by the French émigré artist Daniel Marot. This is another back in the series of 1724, the larger ones of which have a pious inscription in Welsh. The birds in this instance are a swan and a duck, both swimming in the water that surrounds the fountain. Given the incidental use of birds derived from Barlow’s etchings and paintings noted above it seems plausible that his output could have again been plundered here, although the poses of both birds are less idiosyncratic than those of the flying heron and duck.

*A grey goose, ducks, guinea pigs and a black rabbit, painting attributed to Francis Barlow*

Francis Barlow’s incidental images of flying birds provided a useful addition to pictorial designs on British firebacks and their use by pattern makers of stylistically similar work strongly suggests that either the firebacks were designed by the same individual or that more than one pattern maker was working collaboratively with colleagues over several years and having access to a common collection of visual resources from which they could derive the designs they carved.

*In the late-17th/early-18th century the continents were regarded as simply Europe, Asia, Africa and America.

Tag: Francis Barlow

43. Le Labyrinthe de Versailles

40. Francis Barlow and firebacks