The Dolphins
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Picaud workshop.
With its label signed by the artist, No. 6/8.
1959.
Jean Picart le Doux is one of the major figures in the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field date back to 1943: he created cartoons for the liner “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whose theories he adopted (limited tones, numbered cartoons,…), he is a founding member of the A.P.C.T (Association of Painters-Cartoonists of Tapestry), and soon became a professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. The State commissioned numerous cartoons from him, most of which were woven in Aubusson, and some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular ones were for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the liner France, or the Prefecture of Creuse,…. If Picart le Doux's conceptions are close to those of Lurçat, his sources of inspiration and themes are also similar, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where stars (the sun, the moon, the stars…), elements, nature (wheat, vine, fish, birds…), man, and texts coexist.
Reproduced under no. 95 in Bruzeau, the latter comments 'Perfect symbolization of a theme already addressed.' Indeed, since its inception, 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, demonstrates a fairly frequent symmetry in the artist's work, and a very 'seabed' chromatic range.
Bibliography :
Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Walls of sun, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972
