80. THE CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. C. P. Johnson.
Painted 1901.

Mrs. Allingham, after an absence of thirty-three years, visited Italy again in 1901, in company with a fellow-artist, and the following year the Exhibition of the Old Water-Colour Society was rendered additionally interesting by a comparison of her rendering of Venice with that of a fellow lady-member, Miss Clara Montalba, to whose individuality in dealing with it we have before referred.

The drawing of Mrs. Allingham’s here reproduced shows Venice in quite an English aspect as regards weather. It is almost a grey day; it certainly is a fresh one, and has nothing in common with one which induces the spending of much time about in a gondola.

In selecting the Salute for one of her principal illustrations of Venice, Mrs. Allingham has respectfully followed in the footsteps of England’s greatest landscapist, for Turner made it the main object in his great effort of the Grand Canal, and there are few of the craft who have failed to limn it again and again in their story of Venice.

But whilst most people are disposed to regard it as one of the most beautiful features of the city, the church has fallen under the ban of those exponents of architecture that have studied it carefully.

Mr. Ruskin classified it under the heading of “Grotesque Renaissance,” although he admitted that its position, size, and general proportions rendered it impressive. Its proportions were good, but its graceful effect was due to the inequality in the size of its cupolas and the pretty grouping of the campaniles behind them. But he qualified his praise by an opinion that the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to do with the style or general merits of their architecture, for an artist trained in the worst schools, and utterly devoid of all meaning and purpose in his work, may yet have such a natural gift of massing or grouping as will render all his structures effective when seen from a distance. Such a gift was very general with the late Italian builders, so that many of the most contemptible edifices in the country have a good stage effect so long as we do not approach them. The Church of the Salute is much assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the Canal, and its façade is rich and beautiful of its kind. What raised the anger of Ruskin was the disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal scrolls, the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is of timber, and therefore needs none.

81. A FRUIT STALL, VENICE
From the Drawing, the property of Mr. C. P. Johnson.
Painted 1902.

A lover of gardens and their produce, such as Mrs. Allingham is, could not visit Venice without being captivated by the wealth of colour which Nature has lavished upon the contents of the Venetian fruit stalls. Even the most indifferent, when they get into meridional parts, cannot be insensible to the luscious hues which the fruit baskets display. To look out of the window of one’s hotel on an Italian lake-side at dawn and see the boats coming from all quarters of the lake laden with the luscious tomatoes, plums, and other fruits, is not among the least of the delights of a sojourn there. Mrs. Allingham’s drawing bears upon its face evidences that it is a literal translation of the scene. We have none of the introduction of stage accessories in the way of secchios and other studio belongings which find a place in most of the Venetian output of this character. She has evidently delighted in the mysteries of the tones of the wicker baskets, for we recognise in them traces of the skill she achieves in England in the delineation of similar surfaces on her tiled roofs. Her figure, too, has nothing of the studio model in it. This black-haired girl is a new type for her, but it is a faithful transcript of the original, and not one of the robust beauties which one is accustomed to in the pictures of Van Haanen and his followers. The stall itself was located somewhere between the Campo San Stefano and the Rialto.

With these illustrations of Mrs. Allingham’s painting elsewhere than in England our tale is told. We trust that this digression, which appeared to be necessary if a complete survey of the artist’s lifework up to the present time was to be portrayed, will not be deemed to have appreciably affected the appropriateness of the title to the volume, nor invalidated the claim that we have made as to her work having most felicitously represented the fairest aspects of English life and landscape—English life, whether of peer, commoner, or peasant, passed under its healthiest and happiest conditions, and English landscape under spring and summer skies and dressed in its most beauteous array of flower and foliage—an England of which we may to-day be as proud as were those who lived when the immortal lines concerning it were penned:—