Hautes brandes (High heather)
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Four workshop.
With label, n°EA1.
Circa 1980.
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L'espace constellé (spangled space)
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Tabard workshop With signed label. Circa 1960. -
La vérité cruelle d'un ancien jeu (the crual truth of an old game)
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Pinton workshop. With label. 1970. Best known as an engraver (and, be it said, one of the most important of the XXth century), Pierre Courtin designed several tapestry cartoons (of which one measuring 110m2 (!) is to be seen at the International Labour Organization in Geneva), some of which, like ours, are taken from his engravings.. In this piece, the particular and personal aesthetic of the artist is revealed in the original grouping together of geometrical forms, which can be seen as a little reminiscent of ancient civilisations (pre-columbian particularly). Strange also the choice of colour scheme of this artist, who distances himself from the strong colour contrasts characteristic of his colleagues. -
Les chouettes (the owls)
Tapestry woven by the de Wit workshop. Circa 1960. -
Les enfants (children)
Toffoli produced a large number of tapestries in collaboration with the Robert Four workshop from 1976 onwards, designing several hundred cartoons. In them we find post-cubist transparent effects which are characteristic of the artist, as indeed are the subjects treated. Thus Toffoli’s tapestries do not differ from his painting : travelling for inspiration, here he illustrates children playing in a street on the other side of the planet.Aubusson tapestry woven by the Four workshop. With illegible label, n°EA. Circa 1980. -
Le luth et le chandelier (the lute and the candelabra)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Hamot workshop. With signed label, n°2/8. Circa 1955. Jean Picart le Doux is one of the foremost figures in the renaissance of the art of tapestry. His earliest contributions to the field date back to 1943 when he designed cartoons for the passenger ship “la Marseillaise”. A close associate of Lurçat, whose theories he would adopt (limited palette, numbered cartoons...), he was a founding member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-cartonniers de Tapisserie), and soon after, a teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. The state gave him several commissions most of them at the Aubusson workshop, and some at the Gobelins : the most spectacular of these being for the University of Caen, the Theatre in Le Mans, the passenger ship France or the Prefecture of the Creuse département ... In as much as Picart le Doux’s aesthetic is close to that of Lurçat, so also is his inspiration and his subject matter, although in a register which is more decorative than symbolic, where he brings together heavenly bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars...), the elements, nature (wheat, vines, fish, birds...), man, literary quotation ... In this cartoon (strangely absent from Bruzeau’s book), the accent is squarely placed by the title on the chandelier itself, but there are familiar aspects of the artist’s habitual repertoire, reflecting a past, ideal golden age, with the viola da gamba and the butterflies. The inclusion of these motifs and the red background are both reminiscent of the 1955 tapestry Damier (checkerboard) (Bruzeau n° 68) Bibliography : Marthe Belle-Joufray, Jean Picart le Doux, Publications filmées d’art et d’histoire, 1966 Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972 Exhibition Catalogue, Jean Picart le Doux, tapisseries, Musée de Saint-Denis, 1976 Exhibition Catalogue Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980 -
Le jardin d'amour (the garden of love)
Tapestry, probably woven in Aubusson. 1947. -
Icare (Icarus)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Tabard workshop. N°1/6. Circa 1965. -
Les grands pins (the tall pines)
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Pinton workshop for the Verrière gallery. With label, n°1/1. Circa 1965.
