The Concert of Birds
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Picaud workshop.
With its bolduc signed by the artist, no. 4/6.
Circa 1975.
Jean Picart le Doux was one of the great driving forces behind the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field dated back to 1943: he then made cartoons for the ocean liner “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whom he married into the latter’s theories (limited tones, Numbered cartoons,…), he was a founding member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-cartonniers de Tapisserie), and soon became a teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs. The State commissioned him to produce many woven cartoons, mostly in Aubusson, some at the Gobelins; the most spectacular would be for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, or the Préfecture de la Creuse,…. While Picart le Doux’s designs were close to Lurçat’s, so too were his sources of inspiration and themes, though in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the astres (the sun, the moon, the stars…), the elements, nature (wheat, vines, fish, birds…), humankind, texts,… shared the same space.
The theme of music was frequently associated with birds in Picart le Doux; this cartoon was a late offshoot of « la harpe des forêts » from 1953.
Bibliography :
Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972
Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, tapisseries, Musée de Saint-Denis, 1976
Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980
