Hommage à l’abbé Breuil (a tribute to Father Breuil)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Pinton workshop.
Complete with certificate of origin.
Circa 1955.
Perrot began his career as a cartoon designer at the end of the war, making almost 500 cartoons including numerous commissions from the state, most of which were woven at Aubusson. His style which is particularly rich and decorative is eminently recognisable : a crowd of butterflies or birds, most often, stands out against a background of vegetation, reminiscent of the millefleurs tapestries (which would also inspire Dom Robert).
Uncharacteristic cartoon whose inspiration lies in the cave paintings at Lascaux ; here it can be said that never has a tapestry merited quite so well the term « wall art ». Perrot’s input is, in the end, relatively modest : the use of saturated colours (particularly the mauve-pink background), the overlapping of the motifs (which are more spaced out in the cave itself), superficial laid over blotching,… If Perrot is an habitué of hommage-cartoons (Pergaud, Redouté, Audubon,…) this particular example is interesting because of the well-established proximity between the artist and the dedicatee, “the Pope of Prehistory”: here the hommage owes nothing to the artificiality of an official commission.
Bibliography :
Tapisseries, dessins, peintures, gravures de René Perrot, Dessein et Tolra, 1982
