Of Venice in the Work of F. Hopkinson Smith
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Dottorato di ricerca in Lingue, Culture e Societa’ Indirizzo: Studi Iberici ed Anglo-Americani Scuola di dottorato in Lingue, Culture e Societa’ Ciclo XXIV (A.A. 2010 - 2011) Between Pen and Palette The Image(s) of Venice in the Work of F. Hopkinson Smith SETTORE SCIENTIFICO DISCIPLINARE DI AFFERENZA: L-LIN/11 Tesi di dottorato di Agnese De Marchi matricola 955607 Coordinatore del Dottorato Tutore del dottorando Prof. Enrica Villari Prof. Rosella Mamoli Zorzi 1 2 CONTENTS AKNOWLEDGEMENTS p. 4 INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER 1: “HOP: THE LIFE AND THE TIMES OF FHS” 12 1.1 “Hop” 13 1.2 A jack-of-all trades – master of… some 24 1.3 A builder of lighthouses 26 1.4 A notable painter and a prolific writer 32 CHAPTER 2: “THE WONDROUS CITY ON THE SEA” 38 2.1 A Venetian Prelude 39 2.2 Venice of To-Day and Gondola Day 52 2.3 “The greenest island” of Smith‟s imagination 63 CHAPTER 3: “A HUNDRED DIFFERENT VENICES” 86 3.1 Sketching from a gondola 87 3.2 Local color(s) 109 3.3 Old gardens, old palaces and old stories: the tyranny of the past 135 3.4 Picture this! 145 BIBLIOGRAPHY 149 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 165 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Prof.ssa Rosella Mamoli Zorzi for her creative input, but also for her understanding and patience. I would also like to thank Prof.ssa Daniela Ciani Forza for her useful advice and constant support. I am deeply grateful to Prof.ssa Elide Pittarello for her invaluable classes and warm encouragement. My deepest gratitude to Dott. Simone Francescato for his thoughtful criticism and his friendship. Thanks to all my PhD. colleagues, especially Lisa, who have been wonderful comrades. Thanks to Dott. Perazza and Dott. De Sena for their accurate suggestions and warm support. Thanks to Anna, Diego, and Gilberto for their courtesy and help; thanks to the staff of the Art Department at the Boston Public Library and Margaret Zoller at the Archives of American Art in Washington D.C. Thanks to Dott.ssa Cristina Tinelli for being such an inspiring colleague and generous friend. I want to thank my parents, my sister Lidia and my family for their unconditional love, patience and unfailing support, I could not have accomplished any of this it without you! I am deeply grateful to Mariano for being such an extraordinary mentor. Last but not least, I would like to thank my Catherine for her love, patience and understanding: this dissertation is for her. 4 5 INTRODUCTION In May 2011 the Association of Venetian Gondoliers published a free booklet entitled Gondola Days 20111, the booklet was to be given to those tourists who would experience the thrill of a gondola ride in Venice, and provided the essential information on the most popular symbol of this city, that is the gondola. Interestingly, the highly suggestive title had already been used in a completely different context, the academic world: in fact, in 1992, Erica Hirshler2 carried out a relevant study on the presence of American artists in Venice and quoted the fortunate expression in the title of her essay: “Gondola Days: American Painters in Venice”. A decade later, another significant scholarly publication explored the complex world of Anglo-American artists and patrons in Venice in a charming volume called Gondola Days. Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle3. Evidently, the expression “Gondola Days” proved to be a success for it capitalized on the symbolism of the gondola by turning it into the iconic signifier of a world which was unmistakably associated with Venice and its magical allure. Created at the end of the nineteenth century,4 this powerful verbal image overcame the tyranny of time and space; while its author, Francis Hopkinson Smith5, was relegated to obscurity, for his name quickly faded away from the American collective memory after 1915, the year he died. A prolific writer and painter6, F. Hopkinson Smith wrote a number of novels, novelettes and travelogues which helped him attain a respected position in the literary world of nineteenth century America: he was portrayed as a gifted storyteller by his contemporaries (including Mark Twain), and he was also an insatiable traveler and artist who recorded his experiences abroad in a number of travelogues and paintings, which were usually praised by the critics and the general 1 Gondola Days 2011, Venezia: Lineadacqua edizioni, 2011. 2 Erica Hirshler, “Gondola Days: American Painters in Venice” in The Lure of Italy. American Artists and the Italian Experience 1760-1914, Thedore Stebbins (ed) New York: Harry N. Adams Inc Publishers, 1992. 3 Rosella Mamoli Zorzi (ed), Gondola Days. Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle3, Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2004. 4 Smith‟s travelogue Gondola Days was published in 1897, and it was the second edition of a volume which had been previously issued under the title Venice of To-Day in 1895. While the text of the two editions was the same, the format was radically different: Venice of To-Day was a luxurious folio with over two hundred reproductions of Smith‟s Venetian views, both watercolors and charcoals; while Gondola Days catered to a larger public for it had a smaller format and fewer illustrations. 5 Francis Hopkinson Smith was born in 1838 and died in 1915. 6 Smith was also a successful engineer. 6 public. In addition, his energetic and vibrant personality helped him create a popular “public persona” and achieve celebrity status especially in New York City: he was also an active member of important clubs such as the Tile Club, the Aldine Club and the American Watercolor Society. Nonetheless, as previously mentioned, after his death, Smith was quickly forgotten; both his literary works and his paintings seemed to be too old-fashioned and ordinary when compared to the innovative perspective suggested by the new avant-garde movements. Smith‟s sentimental romances and vernacular watercolors represented mainstream nineteenth-century American culture and therefore, they were destined to be swept away by the overwhelming tide of modernity. Thanks to a recent revival of interest in the presence of American artists in Venice, Smith‟s name has resurfaced, being usually associated with his most notable work on the city, the illustrated travelogue Venice of To-Day (1895) and his Venetian watercolors and charcoals, which can still be purchased in antique shops and online auctions. However, it is important to point out that few scholarly works have explored in depth Smith‟s literary and artistic production7; whenever Francis Hopkinson Smith is mentioned, his name appears within a broader context which usually illustrates the (conventional) response of American genre and landscape painters to Venice and its beauty. In recent years, much has been written about the presence of American artists in Venice during the nineteenth century and several studies have focused on those artists, painters and writers, who have challenged the typified image of Venice by depicting (verbally and visually) unusual views of the city. Artists like Sargent and Prendergast successfully transcended the narrow limits of the stereotypical vision of Venice: in fact, their works challenged the popular image of the city which was primarily based on a series of cultural and literary conventions, through which Venice and its inhabitants were interpreted and represented. But these artists were still the exception, not the rule, for nineteenth century American culture perceived Venice as the epitome of the exotic and the picturesque, a soothing pre-modern world which offered a safe form of difference to industrialized and urbanized America. In a sense, for many Americans Venice was an imaginary landscape as much as a real one, a space onto which they projected a whole range of pre-existing and culturally defined images of the city. Henry James aptly pointed out that one could visit Venice without 7 See Nick Madorno‟s essay “Francis Hopkinson Smith: His Drawings of the White Mountains and Venice”, and Theodore Hornberger‟s keen study of the relation between writing and painting in Smith‟s works: “The Effect of Painting on the Fiction of F. Hopkinson Smith” and “Painters and Painting in the Writings of F. Hopkinson Smith”. Annette Stott mentions Smith‟s watercolors of Dordrecht in her essay “Paintings by Antimodern American Artists of the Nineteenth Century”. 7 actually going there, as he commented on the impressive output of visual and written works which represented and re-interpreted the city: significantly, Venice was the main subject of watercolors and etchings, travelogues and travel guides, novels and short stories, articles in newspapers and magazines. Nineteenth-century American readers and viewers were offered the opportunity to experience Venice through a multiplication of images of the city, which emphasized both the aesthetic dimension of its eccentric landscape and the pervasive presence of the past. In addition, Venice and its inhabitants were ascribed a mythical resonance for they were associated with the romanticized image of an archaic and pre-industrialized world, which was untouched by time and by the inevitable changes brought by modernity. In one sense, Venice had become an element of cultural discourse in nineteenth-century American society, and unsurprisingly, Hopkinson Smith remarked that the Italian city belonged to the American cultural tradition as much as Rip Van Winkle or Santa Claus! It is worth noting, that consequently, the popular image of Venice within American culture was subservient to a series of clichés and interpretative conventions which were reflected in a conspicuous amount of written and visual records of the city, including Hopkinson Smith‟s works. Moreover, the exploration of America‟s interpretation of Venice is crucial to a better understanding of those forces which were shaping and/or challenging American identity during the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly the anti-modernist tendemcies8 representing a cultural and social response to America‟s progress and industrialization.