Montmajour XI

1959, watercolour on Charles Ier, 58.2 x 46.5 cm
Coll. Museum L, Louvain-la-Neuve (Serge Goyens de Heusch donation)
N° inv. 858

At the Montmajour Abbey, Gaston Bertrand rediscovered the barrel vault and semi-circular arches which had already inspired some of his “Italian” works and later reached their zenith with the underground structures of the Paris subway. However, in Montmajour, these architectural elements were part of a religious building dating from the Middle-Ages: the remarkable Provencal Abbey echoed the spiritual elevation and sacred radiance which characterize his works. In September 1957, during his journey to the South of France, the artist was struck by the Cistercian architecture of Montmajour and devoted almost all his stay to this discovery. He immediately started to work on that theme and produced a series of quite well accomplished ink drawings which provided, as usual, the basis for one of his most impressive watercolours and oil paintings. Only the themes of the Paris subway and the Provencal villages of Venanson and Vésubie gave rise to a larger number of works.  
Bertrand was very busy with the works inspired by his trip to Spain in 1958 and he waited two years before painting a series of eleven watercolours based on various perspectives of the Provencal edifice. These watercolours show an interpretation of the curves of the semi-circular arches which are wisely combined with horizontal or vertical parallel lines; sometimes, the curve is echoed by its inverted replica at the bottom of the composition. This metaphor was used by the artist himself for some of the titles of his works. With the same quest for peace than the Benedictine monks who once lived in these places, Gaston Bertrand eventually managed to capture the radiant echo coming from the sky which is so typical of the Romanesque art and is expressed through the multiple curves of the old French stones.