BOATS, MARTIGUES.
By Joseph Pennell.
But for less accomplished mortals the sense of limited time with otherwise unlimited opportunity, tends to a certain breathlessness which, however, in our case, gradually gave way before the influences of the country.
THE PORTAL OF THE CHURCH, MARTIGUES.
By Joseph Pennell.
One of the places that we had to renounce, might, from all accounts, have been a sort of Finishing School for students of Serenity. This was Martigues, the little town on the Etang de Berre, where all good painters go when they die. They also wisely go there in swarms before they die. They place here, in opposition to orthodox scholarship, the site of the Garden of Eden. And judging by their records, this, if mistaken, is not surprising. The place induces on a suitable temperament a sort of sketching debauch:—Martigues from the Lagoon; Old Houses, Martigues; Churches, Martigues; Groups of Boats, Martigues; Nooks and Corners, Martigues; the Harbour, Martigues; Sailors and Fishermen, Martigues; Martigues in the Morning; Martigues at Noon; Martigues at Night; Martigues ad infinitum.
Quiet waterways among the mellowest of old houses, churches keeping tranquil guard above the ripple of the lagoon; the silence of the sunny port cheerily broken by cries of sailors and bargemen, by the drowsy life of the place; lights and shadows, colour in every tone, form in a thousand avatars; creepers clambering over decaying walls, flowers in odd crannies; all this offers infinitely more attraction to the artist than all our Horticultural-Gardens-of-Paradise put together. So it is not to Heaven that he goes, if he can help it; he goes to Martigues.
He is never tired of it, as his numerous sketches show.
Not to have seen Martigues is a precious privilege in its way: it is a life-long safeguard against satiety; for then, whatever comes, one unfulfilled desire at least remains: to see Martigues—and sketch!