The Lute and the Candelabrum
An Aubusson tapestry woven by the Hamot workshop. With its bolduc signed by the artist, no. 2/8. Circa 1955. Jean Picart le Doux was one of the great driving forces behind the revival of tapestry. His early work in the field dates from 1943: he then produced cartoons for the ocean liner “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whom he followed in adopting his 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 teacher at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs. The State commissioned him for numerous cartoons woven for the most part in Aubusson, some in the Gobelins workshops: the most spectacular were destined for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, or the Préfecture of the Creuse, …. If the conceptions of Picart le Doux were close to those of Lurçat, so were his sources of inspiration and his themes, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the celestial bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars…), the elements, nature (wheat, the vine, fish, birds…), humankind, texts, … coexist. In our cartoon (strangely absent from Bruzeau’s book), the title emphasizes the chandelier, yet one finds an aspect of the artist’s own formal repertoire, a reflection of an ideal golden age, with the viol and the butterflies. With these motifs and its red ground, the tapestry is very close to the “Damier” of 1955 (Brouzeau no. 68). 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
