In no other city like Venice have I found such a unity between contemporary life and the life which speaks to us of the works of art of its golden age, and in which sun and sea are more essential than all of history.
Hermann Hesse
or omitting either architectural details or whole buildings if the result is more pleasing and employs numerous devices to enrich our perception of details of colour and texture.” 2
The exhibition, Desmond Freeman – Venice, Impressions in Ink that displayed the original works now reproduced in this book, was first proposed by Hon. Michael Yabsley and was held at his gallery in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales in conjunction with Maunsell Wickes at Barry Stern Galleries, Paddington, Sydney. My sincere thanks go to both gallerists for their support and encouragement. A smaller exhibition, La Serenissima at the Ten Thousand Paces Gallery in Bowral in 2015, presented some of the prints and my thanks go to the director, Hamish Ta-mé.
I also wish to thank this book’s graphic designer, Stephen Goddard / Project Two, for his patience in dealing with a demanding fellow designer and his great talent in designing artist’s books. My thanks also to Peter Doneux, a director of M. Perkins & Son UK for so generously agreeing to license me to use their Venezia fabric design for the cover of the book. I am most grateful for the endorsement of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura and the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Australia Inc. and the gracious support of its CEO and Secretary General, Nicholas Cagè.
The process of creating and assembling the collection for the exhibition and this book would have been impossible to achieve without the forbearance, generosity and support of my beloved family.
I gratefully acknowledge the support, patience and encouragement of my wife Christine during the many years that have led to this point with the drawings and the book. Christine’s commitment to the study of medieval history inspired me to understand the context of what I was drawing and to search beyond surface form and design. The quotations she painstakingly researched for the book beautifully compliment the drawings.
I have dedicated this book to my parents, Harold and Dorothy Freeman whose determination that
my sisters and I should, above all else, have the best possible education, has enabled me to travel the paths that I have. My father still enquires daily about progress with this or that picture and his involvement is a constant source of inspiration to me.
I have been the fortunate recipient of much encouragement from my beloved children. Heartfelt thanks must go to my daughter and son-in-law, Penelope and Thomas Eberhart Freeman, for their generosity and dependable, constructive advice, and enthusiastic and creative promotion of my work.
My warm thanks goes also to my son Nicholas in recognition of his inspired and beautiful graphic design and for his wholehearted support for the entire project.
It is difficult to express adequately the debt of my thanks to the many dear friends and family members, both near and far-flung, and too numerous to list here, who gave me the confidence and wherewithal to pursue my passion and realise this dream. The topic of Venice and her special place in many hearts has been explored in many a congenial gathering. This book adds another voice to that endlessly fascinating conversation.
On to Paris!
Desmond Freeman Heritage Park Bowral 2016
2
1
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O’er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the wingéd Lion’s marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was—her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers: In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. Etc..
Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1812 -1818 (installments)
Going down upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorbing loveliness.
I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this strange Dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there yet, and if its name be VENICE.
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic
Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee, And was the safeguard of the West: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden city, bright and free: No guile seduced, no force could violate; And when she took unto herself a mate She must espouse the everlasting sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade, Those titles vanish, and that strength decay? Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reached its final day: Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great has passed away. William Wordsworth, 1802
As in the Arsenal of the Venetians, in winter, the sticky pitch for smearing their unsound vessels is boiling, because they cannot go to sea, and, instead thereof, one builds him a new bark, and one caulks the sides of that which hath made many a voyage; one hammers at the prow, and one at the stern; another makes oars, and another twists the cordage; and one the foresail and the mainsail patches,—so, not by fire, but by divine art, a thick pitch was boiling there below, which belimed the bank on every side. I saw it, but saw not in it aught but the bubbles which the boiling raised, and all of it swelling up and again sinking compressed.
(Describing the punishment for swindlers.)
This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty — this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.
He could then see it again, this extraordinary dockside, a dazzling harmony of fantastic architecture that the Republic provided to cater for the seafarers: once more he found himself before the splendid lightness of the Palace of the Doges, the Bridge of Sighs, the columns on the bank with the Lion and the Saint, then, a sumptuous projection, that flank of the fabulous temple, that gap that opens up onto the Gate and the great Clock …
