Thousands of wild flowers, a bright rendering of the spring, a dancing horse and fanciful peacocks all form the imaginative world of Dom Robert, Benedictine monk, artist and a master of contemporary tapestry making for he found his true calling as a tapestry painter. His art and religion found their home at the Benedictine Abbey of Calcat in the Dourgne region of central southern France, a region of luminous beauty, evocative and bursting with the nature that Dom Robert drew his inspiration from particularly for his tapestry work. 

It is in the nearby medieval town of Sorèze that the Dom Robert and 20th Century Tapestry Museum offers a journey into the world of this singular artist and the process of tapestry making. The current exhibition of his works on show — they are rotated every three years from the museum’s reserves to protect the fragile works that are tapestries from the light — is entitled Animated Prairies and it is an invitation into a  pastoral journey where one finds butterflies and birds, leaves, peacocks, roosters, a roaming tiger cat, and flowery flowers all executed in abundant detail. The  museum also shows the process of creating a tapestry and the tour includes the restored Goubely workshop in which Dom Robert wove most of his tapestries. 

The tiny and picturesque town of Sorèze is nestled into a region known as the Black Mountain, a mountain range in central southern France at the very southwestern edge of the Massif Central mountain range. It was here in the Black Mountain that Dom Robert would create his luminous works from 1930 until 1993 with the years from 1947 to 1958 spent in artistic creation at the Buckfast Monastery in England.

It is here in Sorèze that a museum is devoted to his remarkable body of works , a museum that sits side by side with workshops for artists in an exceptional  ensemble of buildings that are listed historical monuments with a long and fascinating history. It all began with an 8th century Benedictine Abbey, a royal military academy in the 17th century and from the 18th century until 1991, a school with an innovative curriculum in the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment that attracted students from around the world and enjoyed  an international reputation. The museum, which was opened in 2015,  is surrounded by an artists colony with artists and craftsmen exploring and creating myriad art and craft in their studios. Dom Robert who was born Guy de Chaunac Lanzac in 1907 died at the Abbey of Calcat 1997 at the age of 90. One of his tapestries is on loan, exceptionally, to the newly restored Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette. Cité de Sorèze: 1 Rue Saint-Martin, 81540 Sorèze, France. Tel: 05 63 50 86 38. http://www.cite-de-soreze.com