Autumn-Winter
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop.
With its label, no. 6/6.
Circa 1975.
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 Cartoonists-Tapestry Artists) and soon became a professor at the National Higher School of Decorative Arts. 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 Mans Theatre, the France liner, or the Creuse Prefecture,…. 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,….
The theme of the seasons is a commonplace in the history of tapestry that the cartoonists of the 20th century, Lurçat first and foremost among them, have endeavoured to revive (cf. his Seasons tapestry commissioned by the State from 1939 onwards). In Picart le Doux's work, the inspiration is twofold: Nature, of course, but also Music; 'Winter', treated in an allegorical manner, is one of the artist's most famous cartoons dating back to 1950, but it is the 'Homage to Vivaldi' of 1963, with its 4 seasons represented symbolically by coloured suns, inlaid with zodiac signs, and sources of vegetation, that our cartoon reprises, transposing the motifs horizontally.
Bibliography :
Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Walls of sun, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972
