report on a journey to italy switzerland and france

REPORT ON A JOURNEY TO ITALY SWITZERLAND AND FRANCEAuthor(s): IRENE CARTERSource: Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 98, No. 4832 (20th OCTOBER, 1950), pp.1012-1020Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41364255 .

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REPORT ON A JOURNEY TO ITALY

SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE

By IRENE CARTER

Miss Carter, while a student at the Birmingham College of Art and Crafts, won a Bursary of £150 in the Furnishing Textiles Section of the Society's Industrial Art Bursaries Competition in 1948, and as a result spent six months, from September 1949 to February 1950, travelling abroad. She visited Milan, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Siena, Rome, Naples, Capri, Trieste, Zurich, Thalwil, St. Gall, Mulhouse, Lyons and Paris.

In addition to a large number of sketches and notes on art made while abroad ,. Miss Carter, following the practice of all bursary- winners, submitted on her return a report which was of exceptional quality and fulness. Extracts amounting to about a quarter of the whole have been taken from this report and are published here, as it is thought that Fellows may be interested in this example of the practical results of the Society's annual Industrial Art Bursaries Competition. The report includes several passages (necessarily omitted from this extract) describing in some detail visits to museums, churches, factories, studios, etc., in addition to a general narrative of the tour.

As announced on page 993, some of Miss Carter's sketches and notebooks will be on view in the Society's House at the time of the Inaugural Meeting of the forth- coming Session on ist November.

EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT

The journey across France and Switzerland was uneventful, being mostly during the night, but excitement increased on entering Italy. When, at Milan, it wras necessary to leave the continental express and complete the journey to Venice on a local train pungent with the aroma of garlic and packed to bursting point with a perspiring Italian crowd traditionally laden with wine flasks and food hampers, I felt I was really on my way !

I arrived in Venice late at night, and after a journey by steamer to the near by island of Lido, the pensione was located. A meeting with the padrone who spoke no English, a meal on a vine-covered terrace and then to my room where the first foolish thing I did was to open the window in an effort to relieve the oppressive heat - and let in a cloud of mosquitoes. This was Italy - and it felt like it !

Pleasant as this pensione was, it was hardly the place for a student intending to live as cheaply and stay abroad as long as possible. Later I obtained a room with a very kindly family. At first, life was an affair of silence and smiles, but with the constant aid of a dictionary the situation gradually relieved itself.

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20TH OCTOBER I950 A TOUR OF ITALY, SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE

The Church of the Saluté , Venice. One of the collection of water- colour sketches made by Miss Carter dnring her tour abroad

Venice is captivating. The delicate pink and white Doge's palace is joined to the grim prison by the famous Bridge of Sighs. The Salute church is like a sentinal at the entrance to the Grand Canal. The Gothic palaces are fairy-like with their once frescoed walls and lacy stonework. St. Mark's Church is a glitter of white and gold facing the piazza, which seethes with people and pigeons. The cafés are bright with fringed sunshades. The lazy canals are spanned by hundreds of little iron or stone bridges, and Rialto, queen of the bridges, stands self-assured and important with her tiny shops making this part of the city into a thronging market. The Riva del Schiavone is the sunlit afternoon strolling centre and fashion parade for the whole of Venice. The quieter Zattere, haunt of sailors and artists, holds a fashion show of its own with the fishing boats flaunting their gaudy yellow and orange sails. All these things are calculated to dispel the doubts and worries of the most timid traveller.

There followed days of idle wandering and discovery, always well equipped with sketching materials. One turns a corner to find a subject screaming to be put into paint; and having attempted to do so, I had generally reached screaming point myself. This state of affairs was always comfortably accredited either to the elusive qualities of Venetian colour or to the fierce intensity of the sun.

In September there was an exhibition of the works of G.ovanni Bellini on show in the Ducal palace. It was a wonderful opportunity to see so many of his

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS 20TH OCTOBER I95O paintings brought together, and I noted with interest that one had come from the Barber Institute, Birmingham. It then dawned upon me that here in this city there were Titians, Tintorettos, Giorgiones, Veroneses, Tiepolos, and the works of a host of other famous masters, all housed in the numerous churches and galleries, and waiting to be seen. So now began new discoveries as my own ignorance became more and more apparent. A preoccupation with crafts and design leaves one with the sketchiest idea of the history of art, but the remedy for this is a few months spent in Italy.

A sketch of sixteenth-century Venetian glass in the private museum of Salviatťs glassworks at Venice

Venice, of course, is famous for its glass and the firm of Salviati were exception- ally kind and helpful. On their premises the processes of glass-blowing can be seen, many of the finished products being for export. They make gay little glass figures, great quantities of plain glassware which is later decorated by hand, and beautiful vases and bowls of simple shape and magnificent colour. Particularly fascinating were objects made of colourless glass shot through with hair-like white stripes. This process was carefully explained but is highly complicated

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20TH OCTOBER I950 A TOUR OF ITALY, SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE to remember. I was also allowed to make sketches in the firm's private museum, a valuable collection of miniature Venetian glassware.

Early in October I left Venice for Ravenna farther down the Adriatic coast. It is hard to realize that this bomb-scarred and rather dingy little town was once the capital of Italy. Practically the only remains of its glory are the churches decorated with early Christian mosaics. Studying mosaics is not an easy task, because most of them are placed so high up on the walls or the ceilings and the light is rarely good. Fortunately in S. Apollinare Nuovo, a huge scaffolding had been erected for restoration purposes and after some argument permission was given to ascend. On studying the mosaics at close range one is struck by the beauty and variety of colour in the tesserae, no two seeming alike.

The interior of the mausoleum of Galla Placidia is an unforgettable sight. Light streams in from the four small alabaster windows to illumine the mosaics which encrust the walls, and which glow as if studded with jewels. San Vitale, near by, has the famous mosaic portraits of Justinian and Theodore, and the church itself is very lovely if one can ignore the pink floating garlands with which later artists thought fit to festoon it.

A water-colour sketch by Miss Carter of a bronze statue in Florence

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS 20TH OCTOBER I950 After Ravenna across the Apennines and down to Florence where, again,

I found a home writh a family with whom I had a very pleasant stay. The weather seemed icy after the lazy heat of Venice. Although perfect in summer weather, no Italian home is equipped to withstand the rigours of winter and so each member of the household wages a personal battle against the cold. This was accomplished by wearing all one's clothes at once and the highly amusing but comforting practice of carrying with one from room to room a small earthen- ware pot of glowing cinders. I grew quite attached to my "fire bucket".

The flat was in part of a massive palace designed by Brunelleschi for the Pazzi family, whose chapel in the cloisters of Santa Croce is such a gem of Renaissance architecture. In this church a growing dislike of the work of Canova was intensified, but I especially admired the "Madonna del Latte", a delicate bas-relief by Rosellino.

But all else is superfluous beside the Giotto frescoes in the Peruzzi chapel. Their simplicity and sincerity is striking, and his scenes from the life of St. Francis in the adjoining Bardi chapel hold one spellbound.

The two great galleries, the Uffizi and the Pitti, are so packed with masterpieces that it is impossible to say much about them except to record the thrill of coming face to face with a work, reproductions of which one has been familiar with for years. These exciting shocks are continually occurring when one visits Italy.

The British Council in Florence has an extensive library with a fairly large section dealing with Italian, and especially Florentine art. This was a great help in unravelling the tangle of names and facts which confront the student working in Florence, the cultural centre of Italy.

After some weeks in Florence, weeks crammed with interesting things to do and see, I travelled south, and after a lightning tour of Rome with the intention of returning later, continued down the coast towards orange groves and Vesuvius.

Naples, the city which it is deemed so necessary for every traveller to see, was the only place which made me earnestly wish that I was not travelling alone.

It is a city of startling contrasts. The rather exclusive "orange gardens" restaurant high on the beautiful pine-clad hill of Posillipo, overlooking the bay, seems hardly to be in the same world as the narrow, seething, washing-festooned alleyways in the town below. Glistening white hotels tower above the wastes of bomb damage into which the destitute burrow for shelter.

Neopolitans are noted for their gaiety and it effervesces even into the decorating of the market stalls. Although I am doubtful if the "barrow boys" think of it as decorating. However, the man who made his pile of dark blue mussels tingle with the sharp colour of lemons, foliage and all, seemed to me to be a genius. Even the fish lying on slabs seem to be endowed with extra brilliant spots and stripes. Huge gaudy umbrellas protect the sweating market crowd from the sun and occasionally one glimpses a green and yellow tiled church, wedged in between the high tenements and adding its sparkle to the scene. Certainly these back streets are a source of inspiration to the art student, but any attempt to paint on the spot caused a minor riot!

From the bustle of Naples I took the steamer to Capri, rather cynical about 10 1 6



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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS 20TH OCTOBER I95O the possible attractions of this well-advertised island and yet unwilling not to see for myself. The cynicism amounted to nausea when the ship's radio began to play sweet music as we neared the harbour. But I was to see Capri in the winter season (although the weather was glorious) when it was quiet and peaceful, . and comparatively free from holiday crowds. It charmed me and the proposed stay of a few hours lengthened into weeks.

Everything in Capri seems to be in miniature, the streets more narrow, the houses more tiny, and the shops positively minute. A daily duty which gave me much pleasure was shopping. I had the feeling òf having slipped back into child- hood, buying infinitesimal provisions from make-believe shops. It is refreshing to find, in this world of mammoth stores and legions of w7hite-coated assistants, that the breadshop is merely an appendage to the bakery, that the cobbler must be disturbed from his sewing to attend to you, that the fish have just been brought up from the sea by the blue-jersey ed sailors and that your oranges and figs were grown a few yards away.

The pensione at which I stayed was high up and built in an irregular fashion on the rocky hillside. Signor was hard at work blasting the rock to make room for the realization of Signora's long-cherished dream of a verandah. Exotic 'plants wTith exotic names grew in profusion in the garden, which was alive with lizards who make a great tó-do scuttling for shelter beneath rocks when an intruder disturbs their siesta.

Most of my time in Capri was spent in painting. The rocky cliffs which drop sheer to the sea (shades of Tiberius), the Mediterranean foliage, the Arabic- influenced architecture, all this aided by the absolute quiet and tranquillity of the island made it the perfect place for work, and if my spirits flagged they would invariably be revived with words of consolation and encouragement. The local street cleaner always found time to pause in his work to comment on my progress or lack of it and to offer advice.

Rather regretfully, on New Year's Eve, Capri was left behind.

(After spending a further month in Italy, Miss Carter left for Switzerland in February 1950, going then to France.)

In Zurich is the only British Council office for the whole of Switzerland and they were most helpful, although having great difficulty in persuading manufacturers as to the wisdom of allowing visitors to their factories. This same difficulty existed everywhere on the continent. The only solution is to be well-armed with personal introductions.

I saw a printing factory at Thalwil on the lakeside, a dyeing factory in the town, and the textile school where students undergo a thorough training in the designing and manufacture of printed and woven textiles.

The furniture and fabric shops in Zurich are beautifully laid out and equal in interest to exhibitions. Once the language difficulty is overcome (generally a mixture of four does the trick) the shopkeepers are kind and willing to conduct you through their showrooms. Swiss furniture is on the whole very well designed and the designers have, I feel, the art of combining elegance with homeliness. 1018



20TH OCTOBER 1950 A TOUR OF ITALY, SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE Woods were natural colours, no hard glossy finishes, contours were graceful and rounded, and rather plain but pleasant coloured hand-woven woollens are favourites for upholstery.

The Landesmuseum, near the station, is worth a visit, having an extensive collection of Swiss pure and applied arts. Painting, sculpture, costume, furniture, textiles and jewelry are all here, and no permission is necessary for sketching. The Kunsthaus is excellent for both Swiss and foreign contemporary painting and sculptures, some of Rodin's best works are here.

After Zurich, a visit to St. Gall, in North-East Switzerland, was desirable to see something of the embroidery and lace industry. Arriving with no addresses or introductions I found the technical school where firms send their employees to learn the technical processes of machine-made embroidery and lace. Most of the factories are some distance from St. Gall, in the surrounding countryside, but the large printing firm of Stoffels, who have offices in the town, willingly showed some of their products.

Back to Zurich to pay a visit to the Art School which had previously been closed for the annual ski-ing vacation and then on to Basle, where the British Chamber of Commerce arranged a visit to a silk ribbon factory, which proved most interesting.

My only contact in Lyons was the proprietress of a lingerie business, who devoted much of her time to my interests - even to the extent of providing an interpreter, until we discovered that we could converse in Italian. A thorough sight-seeing tour of the town, punctuated by frantic telephone calls to various rather unco-operative firms resulted, after a week of frustrated hopes, in a visit to a silk- weaving factory where the most gorgeous and expensive fabrics were in process of manufacture, metal threads being much in evidence. I was fascinated to watch cloth being made which was destined for Morocco. It was of silk and was a vivid striped pattern of black, white and green-yellow.

The Musée des Tissus at Lyons is a world-famous collection of historic fabrics and affords students a wonderful opportunity for study. In February it was closed for rearrangement but the most interesting pieces had been removed to another gallery.

My journey terminated in Paris. Endless travel for what was by now almost six months had rather dimmed the excitement of seeing new places, but who could fail to be thrilled by the lovely capital of France. Its beauty was enhanced by the perfect weather which was fresh and spring-like.

The wide streets are lined with exquisite shops, the shop-windows in them- selves are an education. The number of cafés and restaurants is prodigious; one wonders that there are enough people to fill them, but there always are !

Trees seem to be everywhere, not stunted city trees, but generous leafy ones, on the banks of the Seine, closing around Notre Dame, and in the Champs Elysées carrying the eye far away to the glittering white Arc de Triomphe.

The Musée des Arts Décoratifs situated near the Louvre is, as its name suggests, a collection of French furniture, textiles, metal-work, china, glassware, etc., and is well worth a visit, although it appears terribly crowded and rather

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS 20TH OCTOBER I95O dingy by comparison with its neighbour. In the Tuilerie gardens are two pavilions in one of which is a constantly changing Impressionist exhibition. I had my first view of an original Rousseau, which far exceeded all expectations that reproductions had aroused.

In the huge glass-roofed Grand Palais, built for exhibition purposes in 1900, the "Arts Menagers" show was in progress. This was the French equivalent to our "Ideal Home" exhibition, and after wading through acres of cookers and washing machines one finds a considerable section devoted to textiles and furnishings.

The printed textiles were very pleasant, the general impression being of simple uncrowded designs and few but lively colours. Wallpapers were of pastel shades and a majority were white naturalistic plant forms on a plain ground.

In Paris I had been given two letters of introduction. The first was to an independent designer, helped by his son. He was most willing to show me his work and also to offer advice as to what to see in Paris.

The other introduction took me inside extensive studios in the Boulevard des Italiens. There were about two dozen designers and the designs ranged from traditional French brocades to modern prints. The latest designs were generally bold and colourful, the pen and ink technique with the consequent fussiness of design is quite out of date.

After about two weeks in Paris it was time to return home and the necessary telegram was dispatched. Having made the decision, I began to wonder exactly what had been gained from the journey.

Firstly, I had been given the chance to paint, a necessary part of any designer's training. Secondly, I had learned something of the manufacture and design of textiles on the continent. Thirdly, the opportunity to see things for oneself in the great galleries and museums is invaluable. And lastly, but by no means of least importance, I had seen a little of how other people live, made many good friends, acquired an insaťable appetite for more travel and at the same time an increased respect for and appreciation of my own country.

GENERAL NOTES

WOBURN ABBEY PAINTINGS The London season has opened auspiciously with the exhibition of a hundred

of the Duke of Bedford's pictures from Woburn Abbey, which remain on view at Burlington House until the end of the month. The collection is remarkable in that it has remained almost intact since it was begun in the sixteenth century, the present selection testifying to the discriminating taste of the Russell family which, indeed; was typical of English aristocratic patronage in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when many of the finest paintings were acquired. Leisured guests quizzed the family pictures before dining as naturally as they joined the ladies afterwards, today the portraits look down reflectively on us.

Among the most charming early works are three family portraits by the little- known seventeenth-century artist, Johannes Priwitzer. Set in light grey feigned 1020



report on a journey to italy switzerland and france

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