The lion
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Picaud workshop. With its bolduc signed by the artist’s widow, no. 2/6. Circa 1980. Jean Picart le Doux was one of the leading figures in the renewal of tapestry. His beginnings in the field dated back to 1943: he then produced cartoons for the cruise ship “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whom he married to 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 professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs. The State commissioned numerous woven cartoons from him, mostly at Aubusson, some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular were for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the cruise ship France, or the Préfecture of the Creuse,… If the designs of Picart le Doux were close to those of Lurçat, his sources of inspiration and themes were also so, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the stars (the sun, the moon, the stars…), the elements, nature (wheat, vine, fish, birds…), man, texts,… sit alongside one another. “Le lion” takes up, in small format, one of the figures, as though heraldic, of the “Cortège d’Orphée” of 1961. Bibliography : Marthe Belle-Joufray, Jean Picart le Doux, Publications filmées d’art et d’histoire, 1966 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, Boulogne sur Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, 1978 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Paris,Musée de la Poste, 1980 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Abbaye Saint Jean d’Orbestier, 1992
