Very Large Hambye Canvas, Painted Canvas On Linen, Folk Art From Normandy Beginning XIXth Manche

Very large Hambye canvas (190cm x 127.5cm overall), in remarkable state of conservation (luminosity of the colors) despite some traces of wear and tear in the corners.
The canvas is fixed between the chassis and the frame. 5cm wide pitchpin frame. Canvas painted on linen, Folk Art from Manche, Normandy early 19th.
At the beginning of the 19th, the manufacture of these painted canvases developed in the Manche, in Hambye (and in Gavray village) mainly by a single family. They were made to decorate the walls of the alcove beds, maintain the heat and bring a touch of color and cheerfulness to the often very poor Manchois interiors. Offered on the occasion of the wedding or during the imminent birth of a child, they are also sometimes called birth sheets.
Painted on linen, on a black or red background, they feature stylized polychrome floral motifs inspired by Indian paintings. These very original canvases were saved from oblivion at the last minute, with in particular a departmental collection made up of twelve canvases presented at the Abbey of Hambye as veritable masterpieces of popular art.
Around 1820, a man named Jourdan François-Aimé (1797-1856), wax maker in Hambye, began producing these painted canvases. This original production lasted about 30 years and enjoyed a certain vogue in the cantons of Hambye, Gavray, Lengronne, Villedieu-les-Poêles, Percy, Verson and Besnières-sur-Mer. The alcove bed appeared in the 18th century. Made of fruitwood or simple fir, it is widespread in Normandy and, depending on the region, with two or three solid sides (as in Hambye and the neighboring villages) covered with canvas. The canvases can be studded on the two or three wooden uprights as well as on the canopy.
The painted canvases of Hambye have now become even rarer than the bed-alcoves they furnished. Only the Villedieu-les-Poêles furniture museum still has a copy of an alcove bed with its complete hanging in Hambye canvas. The former abbey of Hambye, which has become a museum, presents a unique collection of 12 canvases brought together mainly thanks to a couple of patrons owners of the ruins of the abbey at the time, the Becks (a doctor of whom he accidentally discovers a piece in a patient's home). They will then donate it to the Manche department.