Sérénade
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Pinton workshop.
Circa 1950.
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 some of which were woven at Beauvais or at Les Gobelins.
This tapestry is probably one of Hilaire’s first cartoons for the medium, at a period in his work when the human figure was still omnipresent (before disappearing completely around 1960), and he was being regularly commissioned for works in public spaces : this bucolic « Serenade » can be seen to refer to « Quatuor » a cartoon dating from 1950 and woven by Pinton for the Mobilier National.
Bibliography :
Exhibition catalogue Hilaire, œuvre tissé, galerie Verrière, 1970
Exhibition catalogue, du trait à la lumière, Musée Départemental Georges de la Tour at Vic-sur-Seille, 2010.
