Façade of Chartres Cathedral

The artist, scholar and critic Fry became curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum early in 1906 and gave this watercolor to the museum's new assistant director Edward Robinson later that year. Robinson had also started at the Museum in 1906, coming to New York from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Letters that Fry wrote to his wife at that period praise Robinson and express gratitude for his support. A trip through France that summer would have offered Fry the opportunity to make this watercolor, which offers a glimpse of Chartres Cathdral from the rue Saint-Yves and through an arched opening known as the Porte de l'Officialité. In the right foreground a procession includes priests holding a banner from which white ribbons extend, the latter held by girls dressed in white.