The Dolphins
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Picaud workshop.
With its ribbon signed by the artist, No. 6/8.
1959.
Jean Picart le Doux is one of the great animators of the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field date back to 1943: he then created cartoons for the liner 'la Marseillaise'. Close to Lurçat, whose theories he espouses (limited tones, numbered cartoons, ...), he is a founding member of the A.P.C.T (Association of Painters-Cartoonists of Tapestry), and soon a professor at the National Higher School of Decorative Arts. The State commissions numerous cartoons, most of which are woven in Aubusson, and some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular ones will be for the University of Caen, the Theatre of Le Mans, the liner France or the Prefecture of Creuse, .... If the conceptions of Picart le Doux are close to those of Lurçat, his sources of inspiration, his themes, are too, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the stars (the sun, the moon, the stars ...), the elements, nature (wheat, the vine, fish, birds ...), man, and texts coexist.
Reproduced under No. 95 in Bruzeau, which comments 'Perfect symbolization of a theme already addressed.' Indeed, since his beginnings, Picart le Doux has made recurrent use of the marine theme, and particularly with 'the Dolphin' of 1951 (Bruzeau No. 27). Our cartoon, with a more stylized motif, testifies to a fairly frequent symmetry in the artist, and a very 'seabed' chromatic range.
Bibliography :
Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Walls of sun, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972
