linguistic:paraphrasing
18th century

Around the start of the century there was increased interest in landscape subjects, some still with hunting scenes, but others showing genre subjects of rural life.

Few new workshops were begun in the century, the main exception being the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid. This was started in 1720, soon after Spain lost its territories in Flanders under the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V of Spain brought Jacob van der Goten and six of his sons to Madrid. Much the best known tapestries are those designed by Francisco Goya from 1775. These mostly show genre scenes of lovers or country people recreating. Both his cartoons and the tapestries made from them mostly survive, with many of the cartoons in the Prado, and the tapestries still in the royal palaces. As with Raphael's cartoons for the Sistine Chapel tapestries, modern critics tend to prefer the cartoons. The works were privately owned by the van der Gotens and descendants until 1997, and the last member of the family resigned as chair in 2002. Apart from pauses during wars, the works has continued to produce tapestries.

Around the mid-century, the new Rococo style proved very effective in tapestries, now a good deal smaller than before. François Boucher produced 45 cartoons for Beauvais, and then by 1753 followed the animal painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry as artistic director at Gobelins. Oudry's best known set was the eight-strong The Pastoral Amusements made from the 1720s onwards in many repetitions.

During the second half of the century, the main Brussels workshops gradually closed, the last in 1794. Tapestry suited neither Neoclassicism nor Romanticism very well, and this together with the disruptions of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars brought the production of large figurative tapestries almost to a halt across Europe.