The lyre
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop.
Circa 1960.
Jean Picart le Doux was one of the leading figures in the revival of tapestry. His career began in 1943 when he created cartoons for the ocean liner "La Marseillaise." Close to Lurçat, whose theories he embraced (limited tones, numbered cartoons, etc.), he was a founding member of the APCT (Association of Tapestry Cartoon Painters) and soon after became a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. The French government commissioned numerous cartoons from him, most of which were woven in Aubusson, and some at the Gobelins Manufactory: the most spectacular were for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, and the Prefecture of Creuse, among others. While Picart le Doux's designs 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, vines, fish, birds…), man, texts,…. coexist.
The lyre motif, like that of the harp, is one of the artist's leitmotifs. An Apollonian motif, the lyre appears regularly with the sun (see for example “Sun-lyre”, Bruzeau no. 82), but also as a symbol of time (like the pendulums of 18th century pendulums, one of the artist's cartoons with a lyre motif is even called “the pendulum”: Lille sale, 17.6.01 no. 464): “the Phases of Time” (see Armelle Bouchet Mazas, the ocean liner France, Editions Norma, 2006, p. 72) which adorn the first-class smoking room of the France.
Strangely, our cardboard box does not appear in Bruzeau's book: perhaps it was a special order related to a scientific or industrial organization, given the shape that appears across the lyre.
Bibliography:
Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d'art, 1972;
Armelle Bouchet Mazas, le paquebot France, Editions Norma, 2006
