after Raoul Dufy

Dufy has always shown a genuine passion for the decorative arts and craft techniques. Here, with ‘The Blue Bird’, we find ourselves at the very intersection of his interests in book illustration and the textile arts.
Indeed, as early as 1910, Dufy designed the woodcuts intended to illustrate Apollinaire’s « Le Bestiaire »; then, under the guidance of Paul Poiret, he created decorative motifs for printing on fabrics, before collaborating with the Lyon-based silk house Bianchini-Férier. This was followed by commissions for the Beauvais workshop (the ‘Paris’ furniture collection), for Marie Cuttoli, the tapestries woven at Aubusson during the war (‘Le Bel Été’), and his subsequent collaboration with the Louis Carré gallery : a role, if not a leading one, in the Renaissance of tapestry, but certainly a sustained commitment to the medium. Even in the 1960s, the Manufactures Nationales deemed it appropriate to commission tapestries based on the artist’s earlier paintings.

Our tapestry has its origins in the woodcut originally created to illustrate ‘The Mouse’ in Apollinaire’s « Bestiary ». Based on this model – enlarged, coloured, framed by a border, and featuring the text of the poem and the initials of the artist and the author – Dufy, at the request of a couple of collectors, produced a gouache in 1919 to serve as a design for a tapestry, which was ultimately woven much later. This work reflects an unusual commission for the artist, who, as early as 1919, had to consider the specific characteristics inherent in working with wool, long before being commissioned by Lurçat or the Manufactures Nationales.