There is no shortage of questions: who, when, why? The only clue to identify the painter, his initials: “L. L.”. For the date, the painter mentioned it next to his autograph: 1896. But for whom and for what reasons? Did our artist make it for him, did he respond to a commission? Perhaps for a Clairacais who, before leaving for Toulouse, wished to keep with him a memory of his village? To this day, no one can say.
Examination of the canvas, however, teaches us several things: first of all, the style can be described as “naive” without devaluing it; Today, several museums collect the works of these artists who could be described as “leisure painters”, those for whom artistic expression involved spontaneous expression, freeing themselves from the hours of apprenticeship in a studio with a master. Everybody knows today the Douanier Rousseau, revealed by Picasso and Apollinaire; but we could mention Aloïse, Séraphine Louis, Louis Vivin, Camille Bombois or André Bauchant…
The approach of our L. L. is clumsy, the primitive technique, but its respect of the topography is almost perfect. From this stony path of Lalanne, our eye can follow the facades of the houses of the bargemen of Longueville, the suspension bridge and its abutment on the right bank, in the axis of the south pier of the bridge, the Capuchins, then the Fort (and the Tuquet path which separates them), the tower of Calvin and even three arcades of the cloister of the abbey; then, the bell tower dominates the facades of the medieval houses on the Lot. The high silhouette of the castle's roof is immediately identifiable, as is the Dubois house, already represented by Gintrac 50 years earlier. Then, the wedge, and the washerwomen, painted with a simple brush stroke… Finally, the Quai Bourbon, devoid of trees, revealing the facades of Maubourguet. The light cast on Clairac evokes a morning light, when the eastern sun floods the waking village. In the distance, the heights of Seilhade and Tignagues.
But... let's look at this postcard edited by the widow Roussannes before 1900... Wouldn't L. L. have copied it?
There is one last mysterious point: the large dimensions of the canvas. Indeed, these amateur painters rarely had a studio whose dimensions allowed them to work on large formats (apart from the price of canvases and stretchers) : Where could L. L. have worked?