Dolphins
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Picaud workshop.
With its selvedge signed by the artist, no. 6/8.
1959.
Jean Picart le Doux was one of the leading figures in the revival of tapestry. His career began in 1943 when he created cartoons for the ocean liner "La Marseillaise." Close to Lurçat, whose theories he embraced (limited tones, numbered cartoons, etc.), he was a founding member of the APCT (Association of Tapestry Cartoon Painters) and soon after became a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. The French government commissioned numerous cartoons from him, most of which were woven in Aubusson, and some at the Gobelins Manufactory: the most spectacular of these were for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, and the Prefecture of Creuse, among others. While Picart le Doux's designs are close to those of Lurçat, his sources of inspiration and themes are also similar, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where celestial bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars…), elements, nature (wheat, vines, fish, birds…), man, texts,…. coexist.
Reproduced as number 95 in Bruzeau, the author comments, “Perfect symbolization of a theme already explored.” Indeed, from his early work, Picart le Doux made recurring use of the marine theme, particularly with “The Dolphin” of 1951 (Bruzeau no. 27). Our cartoon, with its more stylized motif, demonstrates a symmetry quite common in the artist's work, and a chromatic range very much in keeping with the “seabed.”.
Bibliography:
Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d'art, 1972
