The cathedral of Albi 1915

This monumental canvas (180 x 145 cm) is clearly postimpressionist in the treatment of the perspective and in the way to apply the paste (different techniques between airy skies, green fields and yellow church, melting into one). The spectator is surprised by the apparent calmness of the scenery. It’s almost too calm, it’s a cool beauty, the houses are solidly present but haunted by the huge religious building in yellow brick forming a massive background. The cathedral is seen in the same time from a short distance and a long distance, it’s very peculiar, and there is not one human figure present ! The humanist Dick Beer, attracted by debates and brilliant conversation at artists cafés such as Dôme and Rotonde, good food and fortuitous encounters, a born storyteller, becomes progressively from this convalescence period a misanthropist. He is the victim of nervous crisis which he can’t control. He never recovers totally from the head wound, and one of the physical stigmas is a growing deafness, tragic for a musical man who sings Italian opera with gusto. The artist would return many times to Albi (south-western France) attracted by this strange and severe Ste Cécile cathedral, fortified in the Middle Age. His uncle Hugo lived also here retired for several years and one of his grand-aunts had married a local aristocrat, the count d’Ythurbes.