"La Route de Poissy" with other scenes 1815 - 1825

Ferdinand Favre et Cie made this cotton textile, "La Route de Poissy," sometime in the mid-19th century. The scenes depicted offer a glimpse into French society, but not in a straightforward way. Note how the landscape of Poissy provides a backdrop for vignettes of everyday life, from merchants and families to horse-drawn carriages and gatherings of townspeople. Such panoramic textiles were popular among the rising middle class of the time, eager to display their aspirations to the landed gentry. Yet, the mass-produced nature of this textile hints at broader shifts in industrial capitalism. It democratized access to imagery once reserved for the elite, but it also turned culture into a commodity. Historians can draw on a range of resources to understand the meaning of this textile: fashion studies, economic data about French manufacturing, and analysis of other visual representations of Poissy. This is how we reveal the complex connections between art, society, and the marketplace.