The bombing of Reims Cathedral on 19 September 1914 and the irreparable damage it caused were extremely traumatic for the entire nation and particularly for artists such as Antoine Bourdelle. After the bombing, he produced a series of drawings which form one of the most moving testimonies to the event. The artist visited Reims in 1910 with his students from the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, as he believed that the artistic learning process required direct contact with the works. This was not an arbitrary choice, as the cathedral embodies the essence of French Gothic art. 'Reims is a Parthenon, but of a different kind to that which makes the Athens Acropolis eternal' (letter to Thiébaut-Sisson, dated 9 September 1919). He felt the loss of this monument as both a symbolic and an aesthetic grief. Drawing, a means of freedom and creative experimentation, allowed him to exorcise his grief: on this watercolour paper, '[...] on all sides, angels with broad wings, in pious haste, support the statues which are quivering on their bases [...]; others, in tears, are bent over sublime fragments', like the angel beside the broken Virgin, hugging its contours in a gesture of lamentation; 'others rise towards the sky like the released souls of the dead statues'. This drawing had a cathartic effect on Bourdelle.