Wallpaper Panel

This wallpaper panel is part of a set originally consisting of seventeen pieces (see 14.106.1–.16 for set). The panels depict mountain landscapes, scenes with houses, birds, and flowering shrubs. They were hand-painted in China during the early eighteenth century for export to England. There, as in America, such exotic wallpaper enjoyed a vogue among the fashionable gentry. Considered a great luxury, it added richness and colors to walls. This wallpaper hung in an English home for two hundred years. The panels are installed, in whole or in part, in the Powel Room in The American Wing.

Credit: Cadwalader Fund, 1914