Italian letters
1985
‘Painting goes on but have had some most disheartening disasters with Italian art materials’
14/03
Stopped off [on return from the UK] at Aix en Provence – Aix les Bains – to pay homage to Cézanne (Mt. St. Victoire) and to see the town. Very impressed by the architecture, but not too excited by the…innumerable beggars (like the Middle Ages), nor indeed an extraordinary assemblage of drunks – including a wild Scot with a red beard! It all seemed rather sinister, and we were relieved the next day to find the car hadn’t been broken into. I only realised later that Marseilles is just down the road, which explained everything.
Saw a rough-cut of the film for which I wrote the script on the Newlyn artists of yesteryear – Nanette Newman looking very fetching as Mrs. Stanhope Forbes. I am quite pleased with what I saw. T.S.W. at Plymouth are screening it, but it could go out on Channel Four as well.
23/06
Many thanks for the articles on art schools, and the conspiracy to promote Mr S–, who looks like a very dubious proposition. He appears to have merely enlarged details from De Kooning’s, but perhaps they look better in reality. There is no indication that any collector, or indeed, museum, have actually offered to buy one, which would see to be the real test of Mr S–’s success. I would have though it was just about the worst time to try to sell an Abstract Expressionist. As for “piranha-teeth” Stevens at the Royal College, he is just what they need, and at Bristol too.
It has been a little like Henley-on-Thames here. We had Lady Loch (who once owned Compton Wynyates), Stanley Crooke-Smith, Bloomsbury bookseller and a reincarnation of Dr Magnus Pyke and an anonymous Keith for drinks, thanks to our friend Robert Thomas at Mensano. Lady Lane, widow of Penguin Books Alan Lane has been trotting around, intent on her this-year’s project of visiting Tuscany’s great gardens. Must be over seventy-five, but plans to bring parties of Australians to see what she’s found, next year. We then had three of the “South Bank Show” and “Aquarius” team for lunch, and the Woman’s Page editor and her friend from the Daily Telegraph are coming next week for drinks, and apparently a travel writer from The Telegraph is also here somewhere.
We went to Ravenna and Ferrara – saw a Miró show at Ferrara, mostly late works and about ten thousand prints. Ravenna has all those mosaics, and innumerable shops selling fakes of them. Never buy a sixth-century mosaic! Actually a nice centre to the town, lots of students again, as there were at Ferrara, and lots of bicycles. San Vitale not only has marvellous mosaics, but is an extraordinary building; I would have said a masterpiece…
Painting goes on, but have had some most disheartening disasters with Italian art materials, and had to paint nine pictures all over again. They look alright, but may now do some figurative things.
John Miller has been staying at “The Gemini”, the motel here, eating with us, and I have been taking him on a “recce” of the countryside. He wants to come in September, with Michael Truscott, Jean Shrimpton, her husband, the Bishop of St. Germans etc., etc., and work at the two hundred and fifty watercolours that he has to do for his show next year! The dealer plans to turn over a quarter of a million pounds worth of Millers next time. John is worried – and therefore has to have this entourage with him to keep his spirits up I think. “I am really a recluse” he says, and I say “come off it John”.
The Newlyn film with Nanette Newman is being re-jigged by Kevin Crooks the producer, so I don’t know what damage that will do to my script I’m sure. It was supposed to go out on Channel Four, but I have not heard any more about that…
16/10
Had Lady Mary John and daughter Caroline hanging around us for three days. Now gone. Hope these were last of visitors. Been to visit “sub-artist” at Follonica (seaside) and were taken out to lunch – splendid meal, ravioli with seafood sauce, grilled sea bass, seafood risotto, giant prawns grilled, and superb fritto misto. All paid for. Have now been asked to go for lunch next Sunday. Dreadful painter unfortunately but kind man.
Joe Tilson and Jos called – but I think we told you that.
Have just finished three reliefs based on three squares instead of one – so that they are long. Quite pleased with them.
11/11
Buying a place in Cornwall…could bring…up…problems that we thought about. The art community, the interesting part of it, is pretty geriatric now – Feiler 68, Frost 70, Mitchell 73, Wells 78, Barns-Graham 73, Heron 65, etc. The county itself is getting a rather run-down look and the character is vanishing fast. A lot of property is for sale – NOT a good sign. Roads in and out in summertime are absolute hell. Locals now mostly have a north-country accent, and the Cornish are thin on the ground. Winter is endless – mildew is rife – empty cottages get broken into – in fact, it does not seem to us to be a very good proposition, although Newlyn and Penzance are “home” to me, and I still think they have something to offer.
As for…Italy, this part is incredibly beautiful, empty properties abound, but those that are really on the market are very few. One sees the most tantalising farmhouses, castles, villas on every side, but the Italian “contadino” would rather let them fall down than get tied up in legal disputes with relatives, or fall foul of the taxman. Prices are about the same as those in the UK, although there are places, like those that existed in the UK some twenty years ago (those old Rectories for example that everyone bought up at the time), but here they are palazzos like this one. These go cheaply if in a village, but country properties are expensive – moreover, the majority have no services.
Lady Lane has just bought half of one floor of a Visconti palazzo – superb rooms forty feet long, painted beamed ceilings, marvellous view, SHARED garden (and there’s a problem for a start!)… Place was ready to move into, but is in a very small and beautiful village just nowhere, and could well become a Swiss/German/English/Dutch ghetto. One has to see the situation to appreciate what it is all about.
We did well, because we look out from our lofty position on to superb countryside, but at the foot of the stairs is the village square and all of Casole. We thought about the beautiful little country “podere”, vine arbours, a few olives, down a private road, etc., but having visited a few, we now see that village or town are best. “Down a road” means “down a hideously unkept track”. The countryside is not quiet – barking hunting dogs day and night – tractors, bulldozers, pumps and so on – and in the hunting season, shot flying in all directions…
We have valuable allies and “protectors”, which is important in Italy – a young doctor and his wife; some very long-term English residents; the mayor; an artist at Follonica; a retired chemist in Colle Val d’Elsa (an amateur painter); and our invaluable sand-blaster and mason friend – who may have hands like emery paper but has a heart of gold. We have been on picnics with the locals, to weddings, to horse-races, to church. We have been blessed with Holy Water (or, at least, the flat has been) and we are on smiling terms with the Maresciallo of the Carabiniere – very important that.
My studio couldn’t be better, and the view from it is out of this world. Have done some fourteen paintings, same size as before, and a number of coloured reliefs and drawings or “sgraffiti”. I am hoping that the owners of the building are not going to sell, but there have been a few suspicious looking people giving it a look-over from outside. If it is sold I may be able to find a small hole in which to work in this building, but I would miss the spectacular daily walk to the studio. I never get tired of it – the landscape is so amazing.
Have recently found some extraordinary German cardboard in Siena, must be plasticized or something – very hard and of outstanding quality, and perfect for making reliefs. The price is £14 a sheet which makes a serious dent in the housekeeping money. Otherwise, regarding materials, have had a lot of problems and set-backs that I am only now beginning to resolve. It seems stupid that materials can hold one up like this.
