The flame bird
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Berthaut workshop. With his bolduc signed by the artist. Circa 1960. Jean Picart le Doux was one of the leading figures in the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field dated from 1943: he then produced cartoons for the ocean liner « La Marseillaise ». Close to Lurçat, whom he married in terms of his theories (limited tonalities, 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 him with numerous cartoons woven mostly in Aubusson, and for some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular were for the Université de Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, or the Prefecture of the Creuse,…. If the designs of Picart le Doux were close to those of Lurçat, so were his sources of inspiration and themes, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the stars (the sun, the moon, the stars…), the elements, nature (grain, the vine, fish, birds…), humankind, texts,… live side by side. Motif taken from « l’oiseau-lyre » of 1954, a more fully developed, larger cartoon, including the motif of the French formal garden. Picart le Doux was accustomed to recycling elements taken from earlier cartoons. 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, Musée de la Poste, 1980
