Ram Print Signed by Jean Lurçat

In contrast to the vivid upward thrust of a Lurçat rooster, this landscape-format print offers a more complex and mysterious register. Against the deep dark ground that is the artist’s characteristic stage, a horned ram asserts its presence among dense, overlapping leaves rendered in a cascade of greens — from deep forest tones to the slightly phosphorescent quality of leaves lit from below. The ram’s spiral horns rise above the foliage, its body half-concealed in the vegetal density; scattered touches of red and ochre punctuate the composition. The overall effect is of a creature glimpsed in a nocturnal garden — present but not fully revealed, powerful but absorbed into the natural world around it.

The ram — bélier in French — held a particular place in Jean Lurçat’s symbolic vocabulary. As the creature associated with the zodiacal sign of Aries and with notions of virility, seasonal renewal, and primordial energy, it appeared throughout his tapestry work alongside other animals — the rooster, the bull, the horse — as part of a personal cosmology rooted in both classical mythology and a deeply felt relationship with the natural world. In his tapestries, these animals were frequently set within lush nocturnal landscapes of the kind seen here: dark grounds animated by stylised flora, creating a sense of a parallel world where nature operates according to its own luminous logic.

The print format — whether lithograph, silkscreen, or a printed reproduction of an original design — was a vehicle through which Lurçat’s imagery reached a broad public, particularly in the decade following his death in 1966 when authorised editions kept his work in circulation. This example, signed on the sheet, is characteristic of those posthumous editions and retains the full visual force of the original composition. Framed in a simple dark wood surround consistent with the period, it is presented ready to hang.

At approximately 77 cm wide by 52.5 cm tall in its frame, this print has the presence to be the room’s principal artwork rather than a secondary decoration. The darkness and density of the composition make it particularly effective in candlelight or warm artificial light, where the greens intensify and the ram’s horns seem to emerge from genuine shadow. A companion piece to product 1186 — the Lurçat rooster — the two prints would form a distinguished pair for a salon or study.