Exhibitions 1
Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (Tate Gallery, till 5 January)
Cultural exchange
Martin Gayford
For anyone interested in art and archi- tecture, Italy is, of course, the most attrac- tive place in the world — not just by a little, but by far. In the 18th century, a visit to Italy was a necessary rite of passage for the cultivated gentleman, or lady, just as riding to hounds was the mark of the horsey country set. Nor was it merely an empty social ritual. As is shown by the magnificent new exhibition at the Tate Gallery – Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century — these journeys were both expeditions in search of art, and themselves gave rise to beautiful painting and sculpture. It was a genuinely fruitful cultural exchange.
Of course, that wasn't the whole story. Like all human activities, the Grand Tour had its preposterous and picaresque sides. Many of the grand tourists were teenage aristocrats shipped south in the company of tutors, much as girls are still sent off to fin- ishing schools. These might well, as Lady Mary Montague Wortley remarked, subse- quently remember 'only where they met with the best Wine or the prettyest Women' (though probably few rivalled Boswell in his project, successfully carried out, of having a different girl on every day of his stay in Rome).
But there were many other varieties of Grand Tourist,' as detailed by John Ingamells in his catalogue essay — the mature as well as young bloods, the penuri- ous as well as the wealthy, artists in addi- tion to grandees, both transient visitors and permanent exiles including 'Jacobites, bankrupts or homosexuals', plus the occa- sional crazy. Of the last, one of the most memorable was George Hutchinson, an Irish Presbyterian sent to Rome by God's command to 'preach mightily against stat- ues, pictures, umbrellas, bag-wigs, and hoop skirts'. Though the majority were British, other northern nationalities notably the Germans — migrated south in a similar manner. _ All, except perhaps the Jacobites and the loonies, were drawn by a dream. It can be seen in its purest form in the landscapes shown in the first room of the exhibition, the kind of thing that hung in many a chilly country house. Claude's 'Pastoral Land- scape with the Ponte Molle' is — in two senses — a locus classicus of this pervasive fantasy. The dream was of a sun-drenched land, strewn with ancient ruins and dotted with picturesque herdsmen tending their flocks in a golden light. In some ways the reality of rutted roads, flea-ridden inns, and a classical landscape strewn with their fellow countrymen must have come as a shock to many Grand Tourists, The classical landscape, however, though idealised, was not really misleading. Italy truly was a beautiful country, full of classi- cal antiquities. And in some works of art, what the perspective travellers saw was exactly what they got. Canaletto, in particu- lar, despite competition from Monet, Whistler, Turner and many others, remains James Russel's 'British Connoisseurs in Rome', c.1750 far and away the best artist at conveying the actual appearance of Venice. His two standard views of 'The Grand Canal from the Piazzetta', and 'The Doge's Palace and Riva degli Schiavoni.' for that matter, show pretty much what one sees in those places today, give or take the odd vaporetto stop.
Canaletto's Venetian views were of course a form of art specifically created for the Grand Tourist trade. So too were the similar views of Rome by Panini, of Flo- rence by Bellotto, and others included in the exhibition. One spectacular room con- tains no fewer than three studies of Vesu- vius in eruption, a popular attraction on the Tour. One of these, by the French artist Pierre-Jacques Volaire, impresses by its vastness — it is over 12-foot across but a smaller canvas by Wright of Derby makes up in grandeur of design for what it lacks in inches. These are mementos of Italy, souvenirs of what had been seen an enormously superior equivalent to the postcard or holiday snap of today.
Another persisting desire of travellers is to have their own image made in conjunc- tion with — preferably in front of — some famous scene. The Grand Tour portrait satisfied this demand. A beautiful Venetian example by Nazari shows one Samuel Egerton posing elegantly with the entrance to the Grand Canal and the distant Palladi- an church of the Zitelle behind him. Thomas Dundas, later 1st Baron Dundas, gestures even more proprietorially towards a group of celebrated classical statues from the Vatican museum in his splendid por- trait by Batoni.
Indeed, buying the place up was a prime aim of the wealthier visitors to Italy. Their efforts to purchase outstanding ancient Roman statues were frequently frustrated by the Italian authorities, so that the sculp- tures they succeeded in taking home were generally inferior, and often so heavily restored as to be in effect works of the 18th century. But this effort to ransack Italy for portable spoils was in the end creative, con- tributing as it were to the Palladian and Neo-Classical movements.
The expatriate artist who gathered in Flo- rence and Rome to imbibe antique classical art at source ended up quite often produc- ing fresh and innovative art of their own. Thomas Patch produced beguilingly scur- rilous caricatures of the English community in Florence far more original than his more decorous and conventional panoramic view of the city. His enormous painting, 'The Golden Asses', is a highlight of the exhibi- tion. It shows Sir Horace Mann, British ambassador to Florence for 48 years, and many other members of the expatriate com- munity posturing in the salone of some Flo- rentine palazzo — roughly as if figures by Gilray had been let loose in a painting by Guardi. Patch's works form a satirical counterpoint to Zoffany's suavely polished group portraits of connoisseurs examining antiquities and old masters.
Among the landscape painters, including the Welshman Thomas Jones and Pierre- Henri Valenciennes, the practice of paint- ing directly from nature grew up. Jones, though he did not have much luck in selling his derivative studio paintings to passing Grand Tourists, produced some little oil sketches of Naples with an open-air direct- ness that leads straight on to Corot and Pissarro.
This is a lovely exhibition, beautifully hung on walls of 18th-century colours. It is not only full of delightful, little-known paintings, but also gives a vivid idea of the sights that would meet a traveller in the 18th century — not just the famous monu- ments, but also long-vanished places and things such as a bookshop in Rome or the Venetian postal boat, the burchiello, paint- ed by Giandomenico Tiepolo. It should form part of any tour of London this autumn, grand or otherwise.
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