DOI Heft:
No. 18 (September, 1894)
DOI Artikel:Richards, Frank: Letters from artists to artists, [10], Venice as a sketching-ground
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17190#0189
Sketching Grounds.—No. X. Venice
STA. MARIA DELLA SALUTE
the gesticulations they employ and the plentiful
remarks they address in turn to the painter and
among themselves. One gets used to a Venetian
crowd whilst sketching; the only objectionable
part being that sometimes an admirer will claim
the picture, or rather sketch, to be more of his own
doing than the actual painter, taking the canvas
off the easel whilst the painter's back is turned, and
carefully scrutinising the study in different lights
and from different positions.
In the Piazza San Marco you will always see
plenty of artists making studies of the Cathedral,
or some of its most delightful portals of various
marbles. The effect of St. Mark's with the late
afternoon sun shining upon it is too delicious for
words ; it is simply marvellous—the upper part and
domes shine out one mass of real gold, as it were,
beset with diamonds and mosaics, all glittering in
the unpolluted sunlight from a Venetian sky ; the
lower part of the Cathedral and all the Piazza being
in shadow of the most lovely lilac hue, dotted here
and there with the many-tinted costumes of the
natives, and occasionally with the white dresses of
nurses who are to be seen walking up and down
the shaded Piazza, the cool hue of their costume
contrasting with the sunlit edifice in a way that
makes a poem of most delicate colour.
Perhaps the greatest luxury in Venice is to sit
out on the verandah of your hotel (if it be on
the Grand Canal) and enjoy the scores of charming
effects that present themselves after sunset. When
the moon stealthily mounts guard in the heavens for
the night, the waters reflect her in fiery snake-
like forms, with colour harmonies much too subtle
and difficult to explain, let alone to paint. Venice
is then a perfect fairy-land with its hundreds of
gondolas decorated with parti-coloured Chinese
lanterns, like so many elfins or spirits of the night;
the still air and silent night broken only by the
sound of serenaders—" the Venetian nightingales "
—singing their finiculi, finicula to the accompani-
es THE WAY TO CHIOGGIA
I7I
STA. MARIA DELLA SALUTE
the gesticulations they employ and the plentiful
remarks they address in turn to the painter and
among themselves. One gets used to a Venetian
crowd whilst sketching; the only objectionable
part being that sometimes an admirer will claim
the picture, or rather sketch, to be more of his own
doing than the actual painter, taking the canvas
off the easel whilst the painter's back is turned, and
carefully scrutinising the study in different lights
and from different positions.
In the Piazza San Marco you will always see
plenty of artists making studies of the Cathedral,
or some of its most delightful portals of various
marbles. The effect of St. Mark's with the late
afternoon sun shining upon it is too delicious for
words ; it is simply marvellous—the upper part and
domes shine out one mass of real gold, as it were,
beset with diamonds and mosaics, all glittering in
the unpolluted sunlight from a Venetian sky ; the
lower part of the Cathedral and all the Piazza being
in shadow of the most lovely lilac hue, dotted here
and there with the many-tinted costumes of the
natives, and occasionally with the white dresses of
nurses who are to be seen walking up and down
the shaded Piazza, the cool hue of their costume
contrasting with the sunlit edifice in a way that
makes a poem of most delicate colour.
Perhaps the greatest luxury in Venice is to sit
out on the verandah of your hotel (if it be on
the Grand Canal) and enjoy the scores of charming
effects that present themselves after sunset. When
the moon stealthily mounts guard in the heavens for
the night, the waters reflect her in fiery snake-
like forms, with colour harmonies much too subtle
and difficult to explain, let alone to paint. Venice
is then a perfect fairy-land with its hundreds of
gondolas decorated with parti-coloured Chinese
lanterns, like so many elfins or spirits of the night;
the still air and silent night broken only by the
sound of serenaders—" the Venetian nightingales "
—singing their finiculi, finicula to the accompani-
es THE WAY TO CHIOGGIA
I7I