Traditionally, it was believed that the painting depicted women workers in the tapestry workshop of Santa Isabel.
In 1739, for the first time, cartoons for Beauvais were exhibited at the Paris salon, another way of keeping the tapestry workshops before the public eye.
Thiès is also home to a tapestry workshop, Manufactures Sénégalaises des Arts Décoratifs, where you can see huge tapestries and the elaborate process used to create them.
It was woven by the Manufacture Pinton, a tapestry workshop in the area of Aubusson, a center of that ancient and exacting craft.
The factory was founded by Philip V after Spain lost its Belgian territories, and their tapestry workshops, as a result of the Peace of Utrecht.
The following year saw the establishment of cooperation with foreign companies, among them the French traditional tapestry workshop in Aubusson.
In later years, the cloister would serve as a gymnasium, school, museum, child care center and INBA (National Fine Arts Institute) tapestry workshop.
In 1893 Maillol opened a tapestry workshop in Banyuls, producing works whose high technical and aesthetic quality gained him recognition for renewing this art form in France.
Bourgeois briefly opened a print store beside her father's tapestry workshop.
France's tapestry workshops thrived until the French Revolution, when they collapsed from the lack of state support.