The birds take flight
Tapestry woven at the Aubusson workshop Berthaut.
With its bolduc.
1949.
Jean Picart le Doux was one of the leading figures in the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field dated to 1943: he then made cartoons for the liner « la Marseillaise ». Close to Lurçat, whom he embraced 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 him to produce many cartons woven mostly at Aubusson, and for some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular were for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the liner France, or the Prefecture of the Creuse,…. If Picart le Doux’s designs were close to Lurçat’s, his sources of inspiration and themes were too, but in a more decorative than symbolic register, where the stars (the sun, the moon, the stars…), the elements, nature (wheat, the vine, fish, birds…), humankind, texts,… coexisted.
“Les oiseaux s’envolent” is meant to symbolize the Liberation, a theme found again in “la cage ouverte” of 1953.
Bibliography :
Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972, n°13
Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, tapisseries, Musée de Saint-Denis, 1976
Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980
