Acquisitions

Thanks to a generous donation from private individuals in 2008, the Fondation Toms Pauli acquired The Picnic, the final piece of the Toms Collection. This English tapestry was part of a three-piece lot acquired by Reginald Toms in 1962, whose subject was Children’s Bacchanals (London, ca. 1700). It had decorated the walls of the Toms flat in Monaco, which is why it did not feature in the Château de Coinsins inventory and was not part of the Mary Toms donation in 1993.

In 2010, the Fondation Toms Pauli acquired a small format Flemish tapestry, woven in 1660 in the Brussels workshop of Gerard van der Strecken, a piece that supplemented an important ensemble in the Toms Collection. This above-door piece, depicting Apollo the Sun God, belongs to the thirty-nine-piece sequence of the series The Deeds of Scipio, commissioned by the Marquis of Benavides. The Fondation Toms Pauli already boasted three large historiated tapestries of this baroque rendering of one of the most famous series of the Renaissance illustrating the Punic Wars against Hannibal, designed by Gianfrancesco Penni and Giulio Romano.

Fondation Toms Pauli has just made the acquisition of a 17th-century Brussels tapestry illustrating The Triumph of Titus and Vespasian. Woven by the Brussels manufactory of Guillaume van Leefdael after a design by Charles Poerson in the years 1660-1675, this Triumph of Titus and Vespasian tapestry (375 x 588 cm) recently acquired by Fondation Toms Pauli belongs to a series of eight subjects telling the story of the emperors Vespasian (69-79) and Titus (79-81) during the First Jewish-Roman war.

This rare and beautiful piece complements the four other episodes of The Story of Titus and Vespasian set conserved by the Fondation Toms Pauli: Joseph Prisoner led before Vespasian and Titus, The Assault of a City, Two Women Implore Titus, and Vespasian and Titus Applauded. These were displayed at the MCBA in 2004, at the Flemish Tapestries from the Toms Collection exhibition, and at Musée Rath in Geneva in 2013 for the Ancient Heroes exhibition.

Renowned institutions that possess examples of this tapestry include the Saint Petersburg Ermitage Museum (four subjects including The Triumph), the Louvre, the Prado, the Chicago Art Institute, and the Patrimonio Nacional in Madrid.

With five specimens now in their possession, of which the most recent acquisition, alongside the Ermitage example, can be considered one of the largest and most complete of the Triumph episode, Fondation Toms Pauli and the State of Vaud maintain a prominent place in the world of tapestry.