Jean PICART LE DOUX

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....

The cartoons devoted to music are very numerous with Picart le Doux: the genres, the works ("the little night music", another title of the work, "the 4 seasons", for example), the composers ("Homage to Vivaldi", "Homage to Bach" which will be the subject of a stamp in 1980), the instruments ("Soleil-Lyre", "Harpe des mers"), the mythological figures ("Orpheus"). Most often, these motifs are integrated into a bucolic nature dotted with birds and butterflies in a decorative vein typical of the artist.