Amphitrite’s Treasure
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Berthaut workshop. With its torn bolduc. 1949. Jean Picart le Doux was one of the great driving forces behind the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field date back to 1943: at that time he produced cartoons for the ocean liner “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whom he married his theories to (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 create numerous cartoons to be woven, mostly in Aubusson, and for some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular were for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, or the Préfecture de la Creuse,…. If Picart le Doux’s designs were close to those of Lurçat, so were his sources of inspiration and 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…), as well as man and texts… sat side by side. A synthesis (as early as 1949!) between Sea and Music, themes omnipresent in the artist, in an unusual chromatic range. The theme of the underwater treasure was taken up more literally by Perrot, for example in “Trésors enfouis”. 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, n°18 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, tapisseries, Musée de Saint-Denis, 1976 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980
