Jean PICART LE DOUX

Jean Picart le Doux was one of the great driving forces behind the revival of tapestry. His beginnings in the field dated back to 1943: he then produced cartoons for the ocean liner “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whom he married to 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 professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs. The State commissioned him to produce numerous woven cartoons, mostly in Aubusson, and for some at the Gobelins: the most spectacular were made for the Université de Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, or the Préfecture de la Creuse,…. While 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 astres (the sun, the moon, the stars…), the elements, nature (wheat, the vine, fish, birds…), mankind, texts,…. The cartoons dedicated to music were very numerous with Picart le Doux: the genres, the works (“la petite musique de nuit”, another title of the work, “les 4 saisons”, for example), the composers (“Hommage à Vivaldi”, “Hommage à Bach”, which would be the subject of a postage stamp in 1980), the instruments (“Soleil-Lyre”, “Harpe des mers”), and mythological figures (“Orphée”). Most often, these motifs were integrated into a bucolic nature dotted with birds and butterflies, in a decorative vein characteristic of the artist.