Date: 1921
Size: 29.5" x 46" (75 x 117 cm)
Condition: A+, newly linenbacked
Artist: Senechal
Description: For nearly a millennium, the French city of Reims was synonymous with its towering Gothic cathedral known as Notre-Dame de Reims. The Reims church was the heart and soul of the region, its tallest towers rising 265 feet above the city’s 50,000 residents, its resplendent halls used for the coronation of nearly every monarch since the 13th century. When the fighting began in August of that year, the invading German army quickly overwhelmed the northeast part of France, including Reims, and transformed the cathedral into an infirmary. They filled the church with 3,000 cots and 15,000 bales of dried grass to use as pallets—all of which remained inside the building after September 4, when the Allied forces sent the Germans on a rapid retreat after the First Battle of the Marne. With Reims now only a handful of miles from the front, the real destruction began. Five German artillery shells hit the cathedral on September 18, crashing into the medieval structure, but the more devastating attack came a day later. “The projectiles, perhaps incendiary, set fire first to the scaffold [around the towers] and then the hay. Lead from the burning roof poured through the mouths of the church’s stone gargoyles; windows exploded; the Smiling Angel statue that had stood near the front door for centuries lost its head.
Ominous dark poster showing the destroyed town of Reims. Printer “Viellemard imp. 16, rue de la Glaciere, Paris’ printed in margin.
Size: 29.5" x 46" (75 x 117 cm)
Condition: A+, newly linenbacked
Artist: Senechal
Description: For nearly a millennium, the French city of Reims was synonymous with its towering Gothic cathedral known as Notre-Dame de Reims. The Reims church was the heart and soul of the region, its tallest towers rising 265 feet above the city’s 50,000 residents, its resplendent halls used for the coronation of nearly every monarch since the 13th century. When the fighting began in August of that year, the invading German army quickly overwhelmed the northeast part of France, including Reims, and transformed the cathedral into an infirmary. They filled the church with 3,000 cots and 15,000 bales of dried grass to use as pallets—all of which remained inside the building after September 4, when the Allied forces sent the Germans on a rapid retreat after the First Battle of the Marne. With Reims now only a handful of miles from the front, the real destruction began. Five German artillery shells hit the cathedral on September 18, crashing into the medieval structure, but the more devastating attack came a day later. “The projectiles, perhaps incendiary, set fire first to the scaffold [around the towers] and then the hay. Lead from the burning roof poured through the mouths of the church’s stone gargoyles; windows exploded; the Smiling Angel statue that had stood near the front door for centuries lost its head.
Ominous dark poster showing the destroyed town of Reims. Printer “Viellemard imp. 16, rue de la Glaciere, Paris’ printed in margin.