Signed with initials l.r.: KR 

Oil on canvas

Kenneth Rowntree trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford, and then at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 1939 he married the architect Diana Buckley. They associated with many of the modernist emigre architects in London at that time, and a strong architectural sense can often be felt in Rowntree’s work.

Local English and Welsh churches provided a strong inspiration for much of his work in the Recording Britain project, but this picture (and the corresponding Notre Dame, Paris) testifies that he also delighted in painting cathedrals in France. Rowntree made frequent trips to Paris before the war, and was something of a Francophile, often infusing his work with references to French culture.