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French Panoramas

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Returning to the interior and walking from the south parlor to the north parlor, is something altogether new, neither authentically Asian, rococo chinoiserie, nor strictly neoclassical. Lining the walls of the room is an early French panoramic wallpaper featuring a tropical world of wild animals, palm trees, and dark-skinned dancing natives, naked or in scant bright-colored oriental garb, all being observed by well-dressed European officers and gentlewomen. The paper, variously called “Paysage Indien,” “chasse au tigre” and “vues des Indes,” was produced by Velay Manufactory in Paris between 1807 and 1817 [4]. We do not know how Carrington learned about Velay’s wallpaper, but he most likely had seen similar panoramic papers in someone else’s home. European and “India” paper hangings were widely advertised in America from the late 18th century, and we see French panoramic landscapes increasingly marketed in the US with the close of the war with Britain in 1815.

In his library Carrington later hung “Telemachus on the Isle of Calypso.” The paper panorama, manufactured by Joseph Dufour in France in 1818, depicts the goddess's romantic Mediterranean isle from Homer’s 8th-century BCE Odyssey [5]. At first glance, it is nearly impossible to distinguish the time and space that separate the scenes of these papers. Toga-clad men and women amusing themselves under palms in lush tropical gardens, surrounded by pillared architectural monuments. Contemporary colonized India appeared to visitors in Carrington’s parlor as enchanting as the Greek myth in his library. All in all, there is an easy decorative flow throughout the house between the antiquities of the West and an ever-ancient East, creating a more globally holistic classicism than has been attributed to the tastes of the federal era.
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[4] O. Nouvel-Kammerer, Papiers Peints Panoramiques, Exhibition Catalogue, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1998, pp. 306-307
[5] “Paysage de Télémaque dans l'Île de Calypso,” Nouvel-Kammerer, ibid. p. 262.

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