Jacques DESPIERRE

Adnet, who has led the Compagnie des Arts Français since 1928, wishes to restore to tapestry a preeminent place in interior décor, without imitating Painting, and by confining himself to counted tones (in a parallel approach to that of Lurçat). To that end, together with Despierre, Coutaud, Planson, or Brianchon, he calls on their collaboration. A devotee of monumental art (he will also design stained-glass windows and mosaics; he will be a teacher and then head the studio for mural art at the Ecole nationale des Arts décoratifs), Despierre, after these first wartime commissions, will be called upon regularly by the national Manufactures, which will weave “the fishing,” “the hunt,” “maritime law,” “industrial and commercial law”… throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

The bold colors (the left figure’s garments, worthy of mannerism!), the dense and monumental figures (typical of the period, as of the artist), must not evade the meaning of the tapestry: a religious subject, a vehicle of faith and hope in a troubled period (Saint-Saëns, Lurçat too will know how to conceal the symbol behind appearances). A paradox, considering the essentially decorative concerns of Adnet.

The City of Aubusson Tapestry has an inverted example of this tapestry, with a different border from ours; it is the one illustrated in the bibliography.

Bibliography:
Cat. Exp. The French tapestry from the Middle Ages to the present day, Musée d’Art moderne, Paris, 1946, n°247
Cat. Exp. Contemporary Tapestries, Musée de Lyon, 1956, reproduced fig. n°3
Heng Michèle, Aubusson and the renaissance of tapestry, Art history N° 11, 1990, Varia, Fig. 5, p. 69
Cat. Exp. Jean Lurçat, companions of the road and considerable passers-by, Felletin, Eglise du château, 1992, reproduced p.20-21
Cat. Exp. Tapestry and expressions of the sacred, Aubusson, départemental museum of tapestry, 1999, reproduced p.36
Cat. Exp. Fantastic mounted rides, the horse in tapestry, Aubusson, départemental museum of tapestry, 2008, reproduced p.63