Soleil-lyre (Sun-Lyre)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Hamot workshop.
With signed label.
1957.
Jean Picart le Doux is one of the foremost figures in the renaissance of the art of tapestry. His earliest contributions to the field date back to 1943 when he designed cartoons for the passenger ship “la Marseillaise”. A close associate of Lurçat whose theories he would adopt (limited palette, numbered cartoons…) he was a founding member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-cartonniers de Tapisserie) and soon after a teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. The state gave him several commissions most of them at the Aubusson workshop and some at the Gobelins : the most spectacular of these being for the University of Caen the Theatre in Le Mans the passenger ship France or the Prefecture of the Creuse département … In as much as Picart le Doux’s aesthetic is close to that of Lurçat so also is his inspiration and his subject matter although in a register which is more decorative than symbolic where he brings together heavenly bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars…) the elements nature (wheat, vines, fish, birds…) man literary quotation …
This highly effective cartoon exploits the symmetry of the the lyre (a much-illustrated instrument in Picart le Doux’s vocabulary) is decorated with a sun-face (very Louis XIV-like)recurrent image of solar myth. This cartoon is a precursor of “le soleil d’Orphée” which would be hung in the bar of the transatlanctic liner “France”.
Bibliography :
Marthe Belle-Jouffray Jean Picart le Doux Publications filmées d’art et d’histoire 1966 ill. no. 9
Maurice Bruzeau Jean Picart le Doux Murs de soleil Editions Cercle d’art 1972 ill. n°82
Exhibition Catalogue Jean Picart le Doux tapisseries Musée de Saint-Denis 1976
Exhibition Catalogue Jean Picart le Doux Musée de la Poste 1980 ill.
