Jean Picart The Sweet dish with stylized flower

Jean Picart Le Doux (1902 – 1982) was a French painter and tapestry artist from the contemporary tapestry revival. A student at the Lycée Condorcet, he abandoned his studies to devote himself to bookbinding at the age of 16. Without any specialized professional training, Jean Picart Le Doux began his career in bookbinding and publishing, then moved towards advertising and graphic arts and published his first works in 1935. His first tapestry cartoons date from 1943 after winning the Grand Prix for Theater Posters at the Salon de l'Imagerie. Before the war, working with Jean Lurçat on a project for covers for Harper's Bazaar magazine, the latter encouraged him to study tapestry. Between 1939 and 1945, he produced his first cartoons. With Jean Lurçat and Marc Saint-Saëns, they founded the Association of Tapestry Painters-Cartonniers in 1947. Picart le Doux is a great master of Aubusson tapestry, who produced more than four hundred original tapestries. Several of his works were selected for the decoration of the ocean liner France, including the monumental tapestry Les Phases du Temps for the first-class smoking room. Alongside his pictorial and tapestry work, he produced ceramics in the same workshop as Jean Lurçat, in San Vicens, near Perpignan.