ALAN RANKLE MONTSEGUR

 

The painting Montsegur in the collection of Vento e Associate is from an ongoing
series on castles and their environs which has been an integral aspect of Alan
Rankle’s work since the 1990’s.

It’s subject is a picturesque landscape featuring the celebrated mountain and castle
which was the last stronghold of the Cathars in the Albigensian Crusade in 1243
when the final battle, the siege of Montsegur resulted in the the deaths of over 200
Cathars who walked voluntarily into the flames of a pyre at the foot of the
mountain rather than renounce their faith to the Inquisitors scouring the
Languedoc in their crusade against any dissent from orthodoxy.

In Capture the Castle a book about the Southampton City Art Gallery exhibition
which featured works by Alan Rankle the author Judy Parkinson writes, ‘Castles
summon up the stuff of fairy tales, fortifications and fabrications, standing tall in
their designated aims to be both offensive and defensive at the same time. `they
are symbols of power from where raids are launched and they exist as secure
depositories of stratagems and secrets. `the word ‘castle’ comes from the Latin
castellum, a diminutive of castrum meaning ‘fortified place’. `the word entered the
English language, with somewhat unfortunate timing for the English, just before
the Norman Conquest.

Rankle’s monumental painting Lindisfarne embodies themes of border control and
religious bans both of which galvanise us today, and Rankle alludes to these
contemporary fears in this work. Lindisfarne Castle rises out of Holy Island in the
North Sea close to where England and Scotland meet. In 635 St Aidan founded a
monastery on Holy Island and it would remain a holy site through Viking
invasions and the Norman Conquest. In the mid-sixteenth century the English,
under King Henry viii, protected the border against the hated Scots, and when the
King took against Catholics the site was fortified using stones from the dismantled
priory’.

‘These paintings are part of an ongoing series of works about castles and their
iconic relevance to modern times,’ states Alan Rankle. ‘I first addressed this theme
working in a studio at St Quentin la Tour, a twelfth century maison forte in the
region of the Cathars in South West France in 1986. These recent subjects
Monsegur, St Quentin la Tour, Bodiam and Lindisfarne are, like many castles,
built to dominate stunningly beautiful landscapes, which to contemporary
observers provide a reassuringly picturesque context to the barbarism enacted
within and without their walls.’

 

An exhibition of the entire castle series including these and recent paintings is
planned for 2023 along with an accompanying book of the artist’s sketches and
writings about the landscapes and the paintings.