AND ANOTHER THING
Enjoying the delectable mountains from the shores of Lake Como
PAUL JOHNSON The phrase 'delectable mountains' makes me think of those around Lake Como. I have been painting them for some years now, and they have become dear to me. I was at them again last week. If Almighty God had deliberately set out to design an earthly paradise, he could not have bettered this long, meandering vale. The lake is deep and wide enough to be majestic, yet sufficiently narrow for the lit- tle towns on the other side to seem neigh- bourly: sometimes you can hear their bells stealing mournfully across the water. To north and to south an endless procession of headlands recedes to the horizon, each a paler shade of blue, until the last becomes almost indistinguishable from lake and sky. Their cliffs, forests and terraces descend into the waters precipitously, from heights of up to seven or eight thousand feet, so that though the waterline is low in one's frame of vision, the true horizon — the summit ridge — is high, and the clouds mere celestial ceilings on a picture which is essentially of soaring mountain walls. The density, texture and colour of the elements in this vision change every second of the day. In the early morning, the sun struggles over the skyline still wreathed in dense mist, and is often just an angry, red- orange orb, a fire-opal without radiance. Below it is an infinity of milky blue, the mountains rising imperceptibly from the waters as if both were the same element, the colour ranging from azure and aquama- rine — almost sapphire — to a deep indigo. Nothing whatever is to be seen of the habi- tations across the lake, whose shore is invis- ible. Gradually, as the day progresses, little towns with names like Varenna make a vaporous appearance, then as the sun warms them they assume distinctive charac- ters, each with its tall campanile, clock and onion dome, its Hotel du Lac or Excelsior and umbrageous public garden. Meanwhile the lower slopes of the moun- tains change from blue to green, cease to be opaline and become pellucid, and their vertical contours emerge. In mid-afternoon comes what I term the Great Change. Enormous yellow and gold limestone cliffs, hitherto invisible in the pearly uniformity of the dense ultramarine, slowly make their appearance and stride diagonally across the slopes on the far side of the lake, totally transforming the colour composition of the picture. The slanting sun, as it sinks slowly from the meridian, brings out every precipice, buttress and fissure in these huge battlements, so that with each second that passes they become more clarified. They even shine out, radiantly, long after the lower slopes have merged with the lake in the gathering gloom, and hover mysterious- ly in the evening haze, gradually losing their detail as the sun sinks and the light thickens, until they vanish completely in the all-conquering indigo.
I have painted this ever changing panora- ma of light, colour and shape at every phase of its daily cycle, and in different cli- matic moods too. For sometimes Como ceases to be opal and milky and becomes stormily clarified. Drum-rolls of thunder descend from the tops and bound towards you across the white-whipped waters, while the lightning flickers among the cliffs and illuminates the summit clouds. As I watch these awesome displays, I think of the 18- year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and her lover Shelley, and Byron, sitting on the terrace of the Villa Diodati during the stormy summer of 1816, and gazing across the angry waters of Lake Geneva to the lightning-lit tops of the Alps, while the dread and still tenacious story of Franken- stein's Monster took shape in the imagina- tion of the teenage girl.
The gardens of the house where I stay, loftily sloping down to the lake and framed in cypresses and cedars, make a natural high platform from which to paint the scene. But higher still, clinging to the ver- tiginous terraces of the cliffs above, is an ancient pink tower, which has now been prepared for the delectation of painters. There is running water and shelter from the sun and rain, and a panoramic window has been carved into the masonry, so that the length of the lake can be observed, and painted, even in inclement weather. Last week, a fellow-painter and I took a garden- er up to the tower, and directed him to cut down some of the foliage which, for cen- turies, had obscured the view down the slopes. The hideous whine of the chainsaw rang out blasphemously over the lake. Then suddenly it ceased and, to our delight, two magic windows had appeared, to north and south, in the clustering vegetation, so that Cadenabbia in one direction, and Bel- lagio in another, now presented themselves in sunlit clarity, with the crystal waters lap- ping their stones. We went up on the roof of the tower, where a simple table waits for the artist, and surveyed the huge expanse of forest, crag and lake stretching, it seemed, to infinity, and wondered how anyone could deny the existence of an ordering deity in the midst of such majestic creation.
That night I awoke with a piercing thought about the book, Creators, on which I am now engaged. It struck me that art tends to develop in two antithetical yet complementary directions: from statement to impression, but also from impression to statement. This reflects the way in which nature, in the lake-and-mountain scenery I have described, moves diurnally from opac- ity to clarity, and vice versa. Turner, as a young man, produced watercolour draw- ings — of cathedrals, hill-scenes and the like — of lucid exactness, radiant in their limpidity, then developed his art progres- sively towards the impressionistic blending of light and substance, earth, water, cloud and fire, which is also — and simultaneous- ly — the work of nature. Francis Towne, on the other hand, as one can see from the wonderful display of his work currently at the Tate, moved from immature and muzzy impressions to brilliant and illuminating statements, in which unambiguous and almost ungraduated colour-washes are framed in uncompromising linear net- works, saying all clearly with breathtaking simplicity. Each movement to different poles of perfection delights in its own way, so one is at a loss which to choose, and opts for both.
I think these contrapuntal and antiphonal processes are the two eternals of art, and every great artist prepares him- self, as he matures, to move in one direc- tion or the other. The processes wax and wane, like day and night, or the weather, as restless as nature itself, which is never wholly still or constant. To vary the metaphor, they are the warp and woof of the creative process, reinforcing in their complementarity the strength and richness of the aesthetic experience. But — good- ness me! — I am beginning to write like George Steiner, so I must shut up instantly.
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