Milk seller
Tapestry woven by the workshop of the Moulin de Vauboyen
1965.
Foujita was one of the many artists woven at Bièvres at the Moulin de Vauboyen (hence the MV mark woven into the weft of the tapestries), which was converted from 1959 onwards into a Cultural Centre by Pierre de Tartas, and devoted to figurative art. Cocteau, Carzou, Erni, Volti, … and many others visited there and produced numerous works—monumental ones—as well as in the applied arts (notably the illustration of books).
Foujita produced only a few Cartoons for tapestries, all woven at Bièvres, with Pierre de Tartas.
That of our tapestry (a watercolour measuring 147 x 157 cm) was put up for sale on 8 December 2015 at Tajan, and another preparatory drawing appeared in the Kimiyo Foujita estate (Cornette de Saint Cyr, 28 October 2013, lot 167c).
Depictions of children became (even more) numerous in the post-war period: the same physical type at a high forehead, wide-set eyes, a slender nose, a fleshy mouth, and sometimes working at small trades within an obsolete typology that Poulbot would not have disavowed.
