Les grands pins (the tall pines)
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Pinton workshop for the Verrière gallery.
With label, n°1/1.
Circa 1965.
With a taste for the large-scale, influenced by Untersteller at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Hilaire undertook numerous mural paintings. In the same vein, beginning in 1949, along with a number of other artists stimulated by Lurçat, (he would join the latter at the A.P.C.T. Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) he designed a number of cartoons ( over a score) some of which were woven at Beauvais or at Les Gobelins.
In this piece we come upon one of the artist’s leitmotivs in his tapestry cartoons : tracing light rays as they fall through foliage in a forest, found for example in “Soleil dans les arbres” (Sun in the trees), (but it was already the subject of “Forêt de france” for the “France” ocean liner). Here the concentrated colour scheme gives an effect of stained glass which is particularly striking, and which is redolent of the artist’s many realisations in this medium, notably in the churches of Moselle.
Bibliography :
Exhibition catalogue, Hilaire œuvre tissé, galerie Verrière 1970
Exhibition catalogue, Hilaire, du trait à la lumière, Musée Départemental Georges de la Tour à Vic-sur-Seille, 2010.
