Archibald Eliot Haswell Miller (1887-1979)

Inquisition Tower, Carcassonne

Signed, Inscribed and Dated: A.E. Haswell Miller | Carcassone | 1920

Watercolour (and Bodycolour) on Paper

Dimensions: 39 x 26.6cm

Before reaching Spain, Haswell Miller’s fascination for medieval citadels lead him to the Cathar stronghold at Carcassonne in southern France, which had been the site of Moorish excursions in the 8th century and the all-Christian Albigensian Crusade of the 13th. Though regarded as impregnable, the crusaders ignored the fortifications and blocked off the river, depriving the city of fresh water and forcing its surrender after just 14 days under siege.

The large pointed tower in the foreground “Tour de L’inquisition” was the headquarters of the Papal Inquisitors and a reminder of the darker history behind the picturesque ramparts. By the 14th century, they had largely succeeded in ridding the region of Cathars, the ascetic, gloomy Christians that refused to breed and insisted, rather embarrassingly, that priests should live in poverty.

The style of painting shows Miller’s stylistic debts to his first teacher Maurice Greiffenhagen (1862-1931), the influential illustrator which children of the late Victorian period knew from the Rider Haggard books.

Unlike his larger oils, Miller’s watercolour were generally painted on the spot. The collection of the Glasgow School of Art includes 3 other views of Carcassonne, painted in the same year. It is possible the artist later transposed them onto large canvases, as he was known to have done with his Spanish sketches, but these are as yet untraced.