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86
Jean Lurçat (French, 1892-1966)
LE TAURERGOT, 1949
Aubusson tapestry; (from an edition of 2)
signed in the weave lower left
71 x 56in. (180.34 x 142.24cm)
Provenance:
Eric Pillon Enchères, Calais, France, 12 March 2000, lot 289 as ‘Le Coq’;
Private Collection
deVeres, 3 March 2001, lot 149;
Private Collection
Jean Lurçat was one of the finest tapestry designers of his time and his innovations in the craft were
widely practised in France. His influence on the work of Irish artist Louis le Brocquy - who was introduced
to the medium in 1948 courtesy of the Edinburgh Tapestry Weavers - cannot be overstated. In 1949
Lurçat’s Aubusson tapestry Jardin Des Coqs was included in the 1949 Irish Exhibition of Living Art in
Dublin.
Le Brocquy, writing for Ark Magazine Royal College of Art, London almost a decade later in 1956
describes Lurçat’s work and its virtues thus:
“Lurçat method of designing, already widely practised in France, has given new life to French tapestry,
now more joyous and frank, more durable and economic than at any time since the end of the 16th
century, when resistance to Renaissance idiom finally collapsed. His reconstituted technique imposes
no particular style on the designer, as may be seen by comparing the quantity of stylistically varied work
recently produced at Aubusson. It is essentially a return to medieval ways. In one form or another it
represents the only practical and economic way of producing ‘a very large work of woven and coloured
wools’: a tapestry. For any designer who has made a cartoon by this direct method of Lurçat and by the
indirect, copy-a-painting method of, shall we say, Boucher, there can be no remaining doubt in eye or
in mind as to the superiority of the former when comparing the two resultant tapestries. Only those
can remain obdurate who insist on the virtue of cleverly and laboriously translating paint scumbles into
weft”.
Accompanied by a copy of a letter to the prsent owner from the Musée Departemental de la Tapisserie,
Aubusson. ‘Le Taurergot’ is a word invented by Lurçat and alludes to both the bull and the cock, two
animals frequently depicted in his oeuvre. The Tabard workshop records mention of two versions of this
work, both woven in 1949. The first sold in Sweden, the second is the present lot.
€4000-€6000 (£3420-£5130 approx.)
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