“Ô soleil”
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Hamot workshop.
With its bolduc signed by the artist, no. 2/8.
1968.
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: at that time, he produced cartoons for the liner “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whose theories he adopted (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 professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs. The State commissioned many woven cartoons from him, mostly at Aubusson, and for some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular were made for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the liner France, or the Prefecture of the Creuse, … If the designs by Picart le Doux were close to those of Lurçat, so too were his sources of inspiration and his themes—though in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the heavenly bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars, …), the elements, and nature (wheat, the vine, fish, birds, …) stood alongside man, texts, … “The integration of a text is first and foremost a way of communicating more completely with the poet,” Picart le Doux said (in a process that Lurçat would also use), who drew inspiration from Apollinaire (“la jolie rousse”), but also from Whitman, Eluard, Saint-John Perse, … To an amorous poem, illustrated by a burning heart and literally by a sun, he associates a zodiac—one of his recurring motifs. Bibliography : Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972, ill. n°161 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, tapisseries, Musée de Saint-Denis, 1976 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980
