Jean PICART LE DOUX

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 then created cartoons for the liner 'La Marseillaise'. Close to Lurçat, whose theories he adopted (limited hues, numbered cartoons,…), he is a founding member of the A.P.C.T (Association of Tapestry Cartoonists), 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 celestial bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars…), elements, nature (wheat, vine, fish, birds…), man, and texts coexist,….

The cartoons devoted to music are very numerous with Picart le Doux: the genres, the works (« la petite musique de nuit », another title of the work, « les 4 saisons », for example), the composers (« Hommage à Vivaldi », « Hommage à Bach » which will be the subject of a stamp in 1980), the instruments (« Soleil-Lyre », « Harpe des mers »), the mythological figures (« Orphée »). Most often, these motifs are integrated into a bucolic nature dotted with birds and butterflies in a decorative vein typical of the artist.