These provincial manufacturing centers did not (and could not) compete with the French royal factories founded by Louis XlV at GOBELINS (1662), Beauvais, and AUBUSSON (1665). These factories dominated European production for nearly two centuries with tapestry series designed by France’s greatest painters, including Charles Le Brun, Jean Baptiste Oudry, and Fransois Boucher; the last two worked both for Gobleins and Beauvais.
Among the series Oudry designed for Beauvais were “The New Indian Hunts” (1727), “Country Pleasures” (1730), and “Fine Verdures” (1736). During the 19th century, when tapestries were in less demand for wall hangings, Beauvais specialized in furniture covers, as Aubusson had since the 18th century (such as the covers with Oudry’s scenes from “Fables of La Fontaine”).
When Beauvais was amalgamated with the Gobleins in 1940, Aubusson became the major center for tapestry design and production in the 20th century, thanks to Jean Lurcat, who settled there for the purpose of creatinga new tapestry industry at the request of the French Ministry of National Education in 1939. In 1945, Lurcat, with the artists Marc Saint-Saens and Jean Picart Le Doux, founded the Association of Tapestry Cartoon-Painters, which pioneered the revival of tapestry as modern architectural decoration, according to the principle that tapestries should be original works of art (not copies after paintings), intended for walls and designed for specific architectural space.