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Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012)
Adam and Eve in the Garden (1952)
Aubusson tapestry, 138 x 272cm (54¼ x 107”)
Woven by Tabard Freres & Soeurs. Signed and Dated ‘52 in the weave.
Literature: “Louis le Brocquy” by Dorothy Walker (1981), illustrated fig 16 p.31;
“Louis le Brocquy” Aubusson Tapestries, 2000, illustrated.
Louis le Brocquy, Allegory and Legend,The Hunt Museum, 2006, Illustrated p.72
& 73
I
n the late 1940’s le Brocquy designed a number of tapestries for Tabard Freres
et Soeurs, Aubusson which included
Travellers, Garlanded Goat,
the
Eden Series
and the present work. These were designed by means of a technique le Broc-
quy learned directly from the master in this medium, Jean Lurcat. Le Brocquy
recollects that no coloured sketch was involved, instead a purely linear cartoon
defined areas within which a range of coloured wools are indicated by numbers.
Le Brocquy wrote in 1956 ‘ Lurcat’s method of designing, already widely prac-
ticed 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 quality 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.’
The Adam and Eve theme with its archetypal imagery is treated in a clas-
sic, even traditional manner. As in Allegory, the sun and the moon are to be
found respectively in the male and female spheres, but here they are depicted
in their own right and not as allusions. A black sun appears in eclipse.The Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil appears as in traditional French medieval
tapestry with the birds and butterflies among it’s leaves, but he adds a surre-
alist aspect with eyes as well as leaves (as befits a tree of knowledge) and fish
swimming in it’s branches. In the style of drawing the tapestry corresponds to
the paintings of the period particularly the figure of the man which is closely
related to ‘
Man Writing
’.
The artist spoke of the “
Eden Series
” in 2000: “As we enter the third Millenni-
um, it is perhaps not inappropriate for us to reflect on our origins beyond the
Christian era, to the imaginative legend of Adam and Eve in the garden of
nature, of the awakening of human consciousness, the birth of the mind”.
€80,000 - 120,000