Looking Over Canaletto's Shoulder on the Isle of Dogs

Around about this time last year, my brother and I went for a wander from Bow down to Poplar and onto the Isle of Dogs, looking for the places where our grandparents and great grandparents and even great, great grandparents used to live. Reconnecting with a personal past which we know very little about beyond the names, dates and addresses found on census records. Even though so much has changed in that century or more, there were old churches, pubs and a library which helped us feel we’d got a little closer to those long gone forbears of ours. And so, feeling quite contented, we ended the long day’s walk in the sunshine with a pint in a pub near Island Gardens. But it was just before resting our weary legs that I managed to do something else I’d been wanting to do for a while.

If you’ve been following this blog for any reasonable length of time you’ll know well by now that I have a particular penchant for “then and now” photography – which is to say, when you find an old photo of a place, you seek it out by going there and finding the spot where the old snap was taken, and try to take the same photo now. It can be a lot of fun and it is a great way to reconnect with the past. It doesn’t have to be all that far back in the past either. I’ve even done it with photos I’ve taken myself – there’s a blog post I wrote about a trip to a small town in Switzerland where I managed to retrace my own footsteps and take shots of the same views in summer as I’d taken in winter, just to see how the place could look different from itself in two seasons.

Similarly, ten years ago I tried doing these “then and now” photos in another small town, but this time on the edge of Tibet, to see how much it had changed in just over a century (see here). It’s not always easy to do. Sometimes it can be very difficult to find the exact spot from which a photo was taken. It might no longer be accessible, or if it is there might now be a hulking great apartment block literally blocking the view, which is really annoying – you’re so close, yet still so far. Or another problem might be your own camera equipment, your lens might be wider than the one used by the original photographer, and so it kind of throws the perspective of your photo slightly off balance, consequently the two shots don’t always compare as well as perhaps you’d wish they did. But these are just things you have to live with. Sometimes simply seeing the place for yourself is sufficient enough.

Canaletto's View of Greenwich Hospital, c.1750 (Tate Gallery)

Canaletto

Anyway, this particular “then and now” shot is a bit different because mine is a photo, and the original ‘then’ view I’m replicating ‘now’ is actually a painting. A very famous painting, painted in the eighteenth century. It’s Canaletto’s view of Greenwich Hospital, which he painted from the opposite bank of the River Thames at what is now Island Gardens on the Isle of Dogs. It’s thought Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768) painted this view around 1750-1752, and given its accuracy it’s also thought he must have been familiar with the view from first-hand. However, there is a bit of artistic licence involved, and there are two schools of thought as to why – the first, as with any use of ‘artistic licence’, is perhaps purely due to aesthetic choices made by the artist in order to create a better painting, with a more harmonious sense of composition, or to suit the whims of whoever commissioned the painting, etc., etc. The second thought, is that maybe when he’d seen the view the Hospital was still under construction (as it wasn’t completed until 1753), so he may have had to envisage how it would look when it was eventually finished. With this in mind, it is interesting to compare it to another view, which he may have painted several years earlier (now in the Tate Gallery, see above). Both paintings, however, are quite fanciful in a different way; and that’s the way he has depicted the river traffic on the Thames. There’s a curious mix of typical Thames-going craft and also boats whose more natural setting would be the canals of Venice, which are perhaps the views Canaletto is better known for painting. There are some gorgeous Canaletto paintings of Venice housed a little further upstream in the National Gallery. But from 1746 to 1755 Canaletto was working in England, and although it’s been said the quality of his work suffered during this period, I think both his paintings of Greenwich Hospital are wonderful.

Inigo Jones

The view of Greenwich Hospital which I like best is this one showing the view from the north bank of the Thames, which can be found in the National Maritime Museum (see below). When I first saw it the painting was hanging in the Queen’s House, which is actually the little building shown in the very centre of the painting. According to the NMM’s website, “Queen Mary wanted the view from the Queen’s House to the river to remain unimpeded, and Canaletto's painting shows how Christopher Wren stuck to this when designing the hospital.” The Queen’s House was designed by the architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652), and contains the very beautiful ‘Tulip Staircase,’ the first geometric self-supporting spiral staircase to be built in Britain. “The Queen’s House was completed around 1636 and is considered remarkable for its break with the traditional, red-brick Tudor style of building, and for its elegant proportions and the high quality of its interiors. It was the first fully Classical building in England.” It is a lovely building to wander around inside as well; and it’s usually filled with wonderful paintings. 

Canaletto's View of Greenwich Hospital, c.1750 (National Maritime Museum)

In 1966 a Canadian clergyman, the Reverend Hardy, took a photograph of the Tulip Stairs, which when it was later developed was supposed to have shown some ghostly figures ascending the stairs which the Reverend Hardy and his wife swore were empty at the time when the photograph was taken. However, no ghosts appeared when I took my own photo of the famous staircase a few years ago. Not surprisingly, there are a number of other ghost stories attached to the Queen’s House, as with almost all old buildings in Britain, so make of them what you will.

The Tulip Stairs, The Queen's House, Greenwich

But the thing that confounded me, when I last visited the Queen’s House, was a different sort of echo passing through time. Not so much a ghost, but rather a direct connection of place, painting and painter. The thought that I was standing in a building depicted in a painting, looking at that very painting which had been painted in the eighteenth century, and yet here it was – in a sense looking back, or rather looking forwards, from that time to me here and now. As I stood alone in that room and stared at this beautifully painted canvas, I couldn’t help imagining that somehow I was there inside that building, inside that painting, as it once was back then, given that this view has essentially changed very little in all that time. Looking out of the window, and gazing down past the beautiful old Hospital to the Thames, I decided that I’d find the exact spot where Canaletto had stood and recreate the image for myself. 

My version of Canaletto's view of Greenwich Hospital, 2019

When I eventually did so, this time last year, it was rather wonderful lining up the Queen’s House exactly between the two wings of Wren’s Hospital, framing the vista in the viewfinder and pressing the shutter-release. I’m sure the riverbank on which I was standing wasn’t exactly the same, it’s highly likely that the embankment has since been raised. In Canaletto’s time it could well have been lower as well as reaching either further forward or further back, but either way it is still essentially the same spot, the same view. And whilst it wasn’t as much effort for me to click the shutter as it must have been for Canaletto to sketch and then later work-up in oils on the canvas in his studio, it was still a way to reconnect with both him and that original moment of befuddled awe which I’d felt when I stood before his painting for that first time, standing inside the painting I was looking into, looking back out at myself again over the distance of some 270 or so years. Especially to think that my ancestors might have been living not too far from that very spot at that very time. If I imagined hard enough, I thought, perhaps I might catch a glimpse of the ghost of one of them standing on the self-same spot, looking over Canaletto’s shoulder as he sketched this genuinely timeless view of London.

Also on 'Waymarks'

Tall Ships on the Thames

Walking with Mr Turner in Martigny

Martigny - One Town, Two Seasons

Kangding - Then and Now

Retracing Old Shanghai 

Photographic Memories

  

Tales of the Alhambra - Spain

“An abundant supply of water, brought from the mountains by old Moorish aqueducts, circulates throughout the palace, supplying its baths and fish-pools, sparkling in jets within its halls or murmuring in channels along the marble pavements. When it has paid its tribute to the royal pile and visited its gardens and pastures, it flows down the long avenue leading to the city, tinkling in rills, gushing in fountains and maintaining a perpetual verdure in those groves that embower and beautify the whole hill of the Alhambra.”

Climbing that “long avenue” on foot under the leafy, green shade of the tall trees and the dense thicket of shrubs on either side of the path, halfway up you come across a bronze statue whose patina of verdigris echoes its verdant surroundings. This statue is the likeness of the man who wrote those words – the American writer and diplomat, Washington Irving.

Perhaps best known as the author of Rip Van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), Washington Irving lived for a time in 1828 in the ruined palace of the Alhambra. At the time he was researching and writing a history of Granada, but it was his word-sketches of his time at the Alhambra – which he later collated with retellings of various myths, stories and historic episodes in a book, Tales of the Alhambra (1832), that have best stood the test of time. The book is a classic in a lost genre of what we might characterise as ‘romantic history’ – part memoir, part travelogue, part history and even ethnography – Tales of the Alhambra is essentially a kaleidoscopic work which encapsulates everything about the Alhambra that so enchanted Irving. It is still hugely popular today, especially in Granada where it is available in the town’s many souvenir shops, translated into multiple different languages. It’s pages convey a wonderfully atmospheric sense of what it might have been like to live an idle life amidst the formerly-dilapidated old pile, haunting the towers, galleries and gardens; looking out across the town of Granada from its balconies and dreaming of the Moorish myths which still enchanted the place and which were clearly foremost in Irving’s mind. This is history as romantic reverie par excellence. 

And rightly so, in many ways. I defy anyone who visits the Alhambra today not to be touched by the same sense of romanticism which enchanted Irving. It is perhaps all due to the combination of sun-scorched stone and pink terracotta, along with the lush greenery of the gardens, the beautiful, interlocking geometric patterns adorning the architecture, and the gorgeous tonal harmonies of its myriad polychrome tiles. Wandering through its cool arcades with their smooth white marble floors, besides the burbling water of the many fountains dotted throughout its ornate courtyards. Orange trees seemingly everywhere, along with the drowsy scent of its flower gardens gently pervading throughout. It is all so beguilingly beautiful. 

I’d long wanted to visit Granada and the Alhambra in particular. I’ve been on many trips to many places previously in Spain, but this was my first trip that wasn’t for work. The Alhambra, which literally means ‘the red one’, was a combined palace and fortress – built on Roman foundations, it was constructed and embellished from the mid-13^th century onwards as the seat of the Nasrid Emirate of Granada (1248-1492). Contemporary Moorish poets described the Alhambra as “a pearl amidst emeralds” referring to the imposing white edifice emerging from the verdure of its hilltop eminence, surrounded by tall green trees. After a time, as a tributary of the Kingdom of Castile, diplomatic relations between the Nasrids and the Castilians broke down irreparably. The centuries long Spanish Christian ‘Reconquista’, which culminated in the late fifteenth century, eventually saw the Nasrid Muslim rulers expelled from Spain, pushing them back to the shores of North Africa. Muhammid XII, better known by Europeans as Boabdil, the last Sultan of Granada, reluctantly departed Spain in 1493, sailing south across the Mediterranean into exile in Morocco. The palace was then used for a time by the Christian Spanish monarchy, who added to its buildings before the site was eventually abandoned to the depredations of time and neglect, slowly becoming the picturesque ruin which Washington Irving seemingly stumbled upon in 1828. 

Hall of the Abencerrajes - David Roberts

He was later followed by other romantic artists, such as the painters John Frederick Lewis and David Roberts, both perhaps now better remembered for their works depicting the ruins of Ancient Egypt and the Near East, yet it was here at the Alhambra that they each first encountered the exotic lure of the East. But it was this romantic, orientalising tendency which also lured them time and again to exaggerate and embellish their representations of these ruins of bygone Moorish glories. Roberts’ depictions characteristically diminish the scale of the people within his works, thereby elevating the dimensions of the Alhambra’s architecture to proportions more appropriate to the grandeur of European Gothic Cathedrals, perhaps in order to accentuate the suggested architectural and stylistic affinities between the two. Similarly, Irving’s writings tend to accentuate the picturesque by sparsely populating the Alhambra, reshaping the more likely reality around him in order to emphasise and embroider the solitary communion of his self-reflections with the fabric of the building and the forgotten layers of its past, giving his text a more intimate and individualistic sense of personal, almost clairvoyant connection. As he wrote to a friend at the time: “Here then, I am nestled in one of the most remarkable, romantic and delicious spots in the world. I breakfast in the Saloon of the Ambassadors, among the flowers and fountains of the Court of the Lions, and when I am not occupied with my pen I lounge with my book about these oriental apartments, or stroll about the courts, and gardens, and arcades, by day or night, with no one to interrupt me. It absolutely appears to me like a dream, or as if I am spell-bound in some fairy palace.” Each visitor it seems perceives the place through eyes acutely adjusted to his own ends.

Court of the Lions - engraving after David Roberts

Nowadays the Alhambra is the main tourist attraction in Granada and the reason many people are drawn to visit the town. We visited in early May when the weather was warm but not yet too hot. Staying at the foot of the Alhambra hill in a small courtyard house which had been converted from an old Moorish villa, we were given a room with a polished terracotta floor and a wonderful view overlooking the small stream, known as the River Darro, which runs down the side of the hill between the Alhambra, which towered overhead, and the similarly old and picturesque part of the town, known as Albaicín. Here you can happily spend hours wandering the winding cobbled streets admiring the architecture, finding wonderful, quiet hidden vistas giving beautiful views of the city and, of course, the Alhambra. 

Granada Cathedral

Scholar's graffiti, Granada Cathedral

A couple of blocks further along, hidden in the labyrinthine backstreets of what was once the old Muslim Medina, is Granada’s Cathedral and the Royal Chapel, which contains the tombs of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, whose marriage in 1469 effectively unified Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella are perhaps best remembered today for financing the first transatlantic voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. If you circumnavigate the Cathedral and Royal Chapel’s tall, imposing walls you will notice large faded red letters in certain places, often set high above your eyeline – these are old graffiti, said to be painted using bull’s blood; they were made by the scholars of Granada’s university in the sixteenth century to celebrate success in their exams. 

The interior of the Cathedral is an impressive sight, not least for the sheer height of its large internal spaces, but also for its many architectural decorations, frescoes, and other works of art. The characteristic style of its Renaissance-era architecture, following classical Vitruvian principles in the Corinthian order, is a complete contrast to the Alhambra. Where the halls and galleries of the Alhambra achieve a pleasant balance of warmth and coolness, the grey smooth stone surfaces and small windows set far above the ground makes some parts of the Cathedral feel distinctly cold, dark and sepulchral. However, happily it can provide a welcome refuge from the fierce heat of the midday Spanish sun, but still beware – contemplating the divine too long in such surroundings can be apt to leave you feeling rather like a tiny frog trapped in well, unavoidably aware of your mortal insignificance whilst staring up at the unreachable divine light rippling far above your head.

Granada Cathedral

There is much to see at the Alhambra. Some of it is freely open to all and can be wandered into and around at leisure, but the main buildings and gardens require a ticket (which due to the high demand each day definitely needs to be booked well in advance of your arrival). We set aside a whole day to visit the main parts of the Alhambra, following the sage advice of a Spanish friend of mine in order to plan the best sequence in which to explore. Starting with the oldest part of the site, the Alcazaba, or Citadel, in the cool air of the morning. We’d booked our timed entry tickets for around noon to enter the Plaza de Nazaríes, the ‘Royal Complex’ – which includes the Court of the Myrtles, the Hall of the Ambassadors, the Court of the Lions, and the Hall of the Abencerrajes (named after a prominent Zasrid noble family, whom legend says were all assassinated in this hall). This took us a good couple of hours to explore, and meant we escaped the midday sun, leaving us with the remainder of the day to stroll at leisure through the palace gardens. Finally making our way up to the Generalife, the name derived from the Arabic ‘Jennat al Arif’, meaning the ‘Garden of Arif’, or the ‘Garden of the Architect’ in the drowsy warmth of late afternoon.

"Celinda!"

As Irving himself said, “How unworthy is my scribbling of the place.” It is hard to put into words the thoughts and feelings this wonderful old palace inspires (although Irving did a pretty damn good job of it in his famous book!), especially in the moments when the coach parties of tourists bustle out of your immediate vicinity and you are left in a peaceful moment of isolation before the next wave bustles in. Out in the gardens there’s a lot more room to circulate and find more tranquil and secluded spots in which to reflect and unhurriedly take it all in. The gardens were filled with a gorgeous array of flowering plants and orange trees in full fruit at the time we visited. At several places in the gardens (and around the town too) we came across the split skins of some of the oranges which it appeared people were clearly all too strongly tempted to taste – yet, watching the reactions of people actually doing this, and given the fact that most of the fruit was frequently left behind with the skins, it seemed to suggest that these oranges had a bitterness best reserved for making Seville marmalade! – Everywhere we wandered throughout the Alhambra’s grounds we could smell all around us the lovely scent of what we took to be orange blossom, given the number of orange trees; but, on our eventually tracking down its source to a small and unobtrusive looking white flower, a passing gardener who worked in the grounds of the Alhambra saw our delight in discovering the tiny blossoms and stopped to tell us the flower’s Spanish name, “Celinda!” – One day, we thought, we’d love to see if it might be possible to grow celinda (sweet mock-orange, Philadelphus coronarius L.) in our own garden in Japan – to bring back memories of the Alhambra on warm summer nights.

Manuel de Falla in his home on Alhambra Hill

Despite his faux personal misgivings, Washington Irving’s ‘unworthy scribblings’ have proved to be a lasting literary monument to the captivating charm of the Alhambra. Describing it as a unique folly to a bygone age of Moorish architectural magnificence: “Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.” His words still resonate strongly with today’s visitors, but there is a similar monument to the Alhambra in a different medium which was penned some eighty years later by the Spanish composer, Manuel de Falla in 1915. Nights in the Gardens of Spain is an evocative soundscape, which to my ear evokes the fluid sounds of shallow rills of water and old bronze-spouted fountains tinkling in the polished marble courtyards and the lush green gardens of the Alhambra. Falla first visited Granada in 1915 and was so taken by the place that he later moved there. Settling in a very simple house, just a short stroll from the entrance to the Generalife, where he lived from 1921 to 1939. His home has been preserved and can be visited today. Falla referred to this magical piece of music as ‘symphonic impressions.’ The gentle flutes, oboes and bassoons, and the softly plucked strings syncopate with the tinkling piano and rhythmic timpani in passages which are reminiscent of Sufi dances, a mystical kind of meditation famously performed by whirling dervishes, lending the music an exotic, orientalist air which in parts puts me in mind of snake charmers or the vintage classic Hollywood film, Casablanca (1942), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

Manuel de Falla, second from left

 

Later on, the graphic artist M. C. Escher visited the Alhambra in 1936, shortly before the Spanish Civil War. He was greatly interested in the repeating geometric motifs which appear to be interlocked in patterns that repeat into infinity in the ornate coloured tiles and intricate plasterwork which decorate many of the palace’s finest rooms. These mathematical patterns in which lines simultaneously delineate both inside and outside spaces, blurring the transitions between the two to create mind-bending optical illusions can be found echoed in many of his best known drawings.

In many ways, since it was abandoned by the Moors, who presumably knew all its secrets, the Alhambra has become an illusion, the fascination of which continues to endure even to this day. Again, Washington Irving perhaps says it best: “The peculiar charm of this old dreamy palace is its power of calling up vague reveries and picturings of the past, and thus clothing naked realities with the illusions of the memory and the imagination.” Just as it was for Irving, so too I found myself falling utterly under the spell of the Alhambra. Reflecting upon the place now, I realise that all the elements of it – in terms of its architectural form, its garden design, and in terms of the inspiration it gave to both contemporary and later literary, artistic and musical tributes – the Alhambra appeals to the full range of my aesthetic inclinations. For me, its harmonies satisfy the self’s primary senses in terms of sight, scent, sound, textures – and even, perhaps more surprisingly, taste. One of the main reasons why I so enjoy travelling in Spain is its Mediterranean cuisine. All of the things I relish the most seem to be combined in Spanish tapas: cheese, olives, pimentos, white tuna fish, chorizo, and, of course, iberico ham. Riojas are one of my most favourite wines, but by far one of my best loved tipples is Spanish brandy. It’s made in the Jerez region of Andalusia, and the distillation techniques used to produce this brandy are said to have been passed down through the local generations from the Moors, who settled in Jerez de la Frontera, roughly 160 miles west of Granada, around 711. Spanish brandy gets its distinctive flavour, like burnt sugar or molasses, partly from the fact that it is matured in old sherry barrels. Hence the best way to end our day ambling around the Alhambra was to sit on the terrace of the Restaurante Especia, part of the idyllic Parador de Granada Hotel, overlooking the archaeological remains of the Turkish bath of the old Moorish palace, enjoying the scenic view of Sacromonte and Albaicín on the opposite hillside, whilst enjoying a very late lunch … drifting into an early dinner. Here I could easily empathise with the old Nasrid sultans and their bards, and happily believe that if heaven is indeed a paradise, that paradise is certainly echoed in the gentle, earthly breezes stirring the leafy green shade of the beautiful, sun-kissed gardens of old Spain.

Granada's Modern Day Medina

River Darro

Iglesia San Gil y Santa Ana

Gracias por sua visita

~

References

Michael Jacobs, Alhambra (Frances Lincoln, 2005)

Yuja Wang | Charles Dutoit | NHK Symphony Orchestra

Manuel De Falla - Nights in the Gardens of Spain