Woven in Aubusson France by the Atelier René Duché, Meilleur ouvrier de France. Editions of nine, two artist proofs.
Artist's notesIn Dublin during the early forties, I became interested in the effect of colour, particularly in the relationship of the chromatic scale in music to the twelve subdivisions of the primary colours, red, yellow and blue. I still have some remaining charts I made at the National Library in which I attempted to relate musical notes to their corresponding colours by means of their comparative vibrations. I was fascinated by the possibilities of reconstructing musical chords in pure colour. In paintings I made at the time, such as Spanish Shawl (1942) I did in fact manage to incorporate major and minor 'colour chords' for their emotional resonance.
At the same time I was also excited by the dramatic effect caused by the visual inversion of both colour and tone. I then noted:
Further to the emotional character of single and interrelated colour, lies the magic of colour reversal. Staring fixedly at a colour or colours, the 'saturated' eye - shifting to a white surface - precisely inverts colour both in hue and in tonality. A retinal 'memory' emerges inverted, an entirely new perception as contrary as night from day.
Some years later in London (1948 - 52) I designed a number of tapestries for Tabard Frères et Soeurs, Aubusson, which included Travellers, Garlanded Goat, and the Eden series. These tapestries were designed by means of a technique I learned directly from the master in this medium, Jean Lurçat. No coloured cartoon is involved. Instead a purely linear cartoon defines areas within which a range of coloured wools are indicated by numbers.
But, further to these first cartoons, my excitement regarding the drama of colour-inversion encouraged me to make at the time second versions of these linear cartoons, inverted both in colour and tone.
I have had to wait some fifty years before these colour-inverted cartoons could be woven at Aubusson by the great Lissier René Duché who along with my son Pierre has at last enabled me to realise their inverted transformation of mood, 'as contrary as night from day.
It is curious that le Brocquy's interest in colour, and his admiration for the great colourists from Titian to Manet and Matisse, has scarcely been reflected in his painting subsequent to the so-called Traveller period of the late Forties. In his grey period of the Fifties and his subsequent white paintings, colour is used with the utmost restraint. Tapestry, however, gave him an unbounded if spasmodic outlet in his feelings for colour, already evident in his first works in the medium, Travellers, Garlanded Goat, Allegory and the Eden series. For these the artist made linear cartoons, a technique he learned directly from the great tapestry reformist, Jean Lurçat, numbered according to the Gamme or range of coloured wools provided by the Aubusson weavers, Tabard Frères et Soeurs and woven from 1950 onward. Again his curiosity about colour interposed. He became excited by the dramatic effect caused by Colour invertion, noting at the time: 'Further to the emotional character of single and interrelated colour, lies the magic of colour reversal. Staring fixedly at a colour or colours, the 'saturated' eye - shifting to a white surface - precisely inverts colour both in hue and in tonality. A retinal 'memory' emerges inverted, an entirely new perception as contrary as night from day'. In 1952, this 'entirely new perception' encouraged the artist to renumber the entire series of early tapestry cartoons, inverted both in colour and tone. Now, almost fifty years later, they have been at last realised, expertly woven at Aubusson in limited editions by René Duché, Meilleur ouvrier de France .
