Les nymphéas (the waterlilies)
Aubusson tapestry woven in the Pinton workshop.
With label, n°6/6.
1968.
With a taste for the large-scale, influenced by Untersteller at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Hilaire undertook numerous mural paintings. In the same vein, beginning in 1949, along with a number of other artists stimulated by Lurçat, (he would join the latter at the A.P.C.T. Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) he designed a number of cartoons some of which were woven at Beauvais or at Les Gobelins.
Hilaire makes the subject, previously referenced by Monet, his own in his habitual, cubist (and tending towards the abstract) style, characterised by lines and circular shapes in an exalted blue and green colour scheme. His early passion for horticulture, which was originally to be his profession, here echoes that of Monet in Giverny.
Bibliography :
Exhibition catalogue Hilaire, œuvre tissé, galerie Verrière, 1970, ill.
Exhibition catalogue, du trait à la lumière, Musée Départemental Georges de la Tour at Vic-sur-Seille, 2010.
