Artist: Paul Rainer (biography)
Medium: Watercolour on Board
Size: 14" x 12" (350mm x 300mm)
Date: 1968
Signature: Signed by artist bottom right

This is the Signed unique original Watercolour painting by Paul Rainer.

In 1922, in a partially submerged cave near the village of Montespan in the Pyrenees, young Norbert Casteret made an amazing discovery.

Despite having no breathing gear or anything more than candles for illumination he passed through two submerged sections of a cave and discovered a boar tooth. The next year he returned with his friend Henri Godin. This time he discovered a new cave with pictures of bears and horses on the wall.

It was then that the two explorers found the prehistoric statue of the bear, roughly 90cm high by 120cm long. There were spear marks on the side as though ancient hunters had ritually "killed" the effigy as a good luck omen.

There was a sensation when word got out but no-one dared enter the cave until Norbert had shown the villagers how to draw off the water. In later life he pioneered safety devices for such explorations including waterproof torches and breathing apparatus.

From Look and Learn #357 16 November 1968.