Art critic Bill Berkson reflects on friend and painter George Schneeman’s sketches of Romanesque arches from a trip with his wife through southern France. 

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The swift ink drawings George made in his sketchbook in the course of this Romanesque jaunt are simply notational, both aids to memory and on-the-spot responses to what he and Katie had gone to see. These were augmented by the many photographs George took of the churches and their environs. Later, the following winter, when asked to rough out a painting of his favorite of the churches seen, George reached for a snapshot of Saint Radegonde in the maritime town of Talmont, grabbed a brush and a large sheet of Arches paper and, with rapid streaks and arcs of plain and milky umber under facets of blue sky, rendered the ever-welcoming frontal view, powerfully.

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Read more from Berkson and see more of Schneeman’s sketches in Issue 7, out now.