What was the Grand Tour

1. What was the Grand Tour

2. The Grand Tour was an experience of travelling around Europe which the English elite undertook at the turn of the 17th century, in order to learn about language, architecture, geography, and culture. It began in the 16th century and gained popularity during the following century. The term “Grand Tour” was introduced by Richard Lassels in his 1670 book Voyage to Italy. The tourist industry grew to meet the needs of the 20 year old travellers and their tutors across the European continent. The young tourists were wealthy and could afford the long journey. They carried letters of reference and introduction with them when they left England. Sightseeing became an essential part of tourism: cathedrals, monuments and the sites of ancient Rome were all regarded as important. Wealthy people also travelled for pleasure and for health reasons.The mineral springs and spa resorts of Austria, Germany and Italy became popular destinations.

3. The most common crossing of the English Channel was made from Dover to Calais, France (today an underwater road tunnel crosses the channel), but the crossing was not easy at all: there were risks of seasickness, illness, and even shipwreck. A trip from Dover, across the Channel to Calais, and onto Paris, usually took three days. The Grand Tourists were most interested in visiting those cities that were considered the major centers of culture at the time - Paris, Rome, and Venice were the key cities;Florence and Naples were also popular destinations. Tourists travelled from city to city and usually spent some weeks in smaller cities and up to several months in these three key cities. Paris was definitely the most popular city, as French was the most common second language of the British elite, the roads to Paris were excellent, and Paris was the most impressive city to the English young people.

4. In Paris a Tourist would usually rent an apartment, for weeks or even for several months. Day trips from Paris to the French countryside, or to Versailles (the home of the French monarchy) were quite common. While apartments were rented in major cities, in smaller towns the inns were often of low quality, harsh and dirty. Other locations included in some Grand Tours were Spain, Portugal, Germany, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Baltic. However, these places did not have the interest and historical appeal of Paris and Italy, and the roads were not so easy, so they remained off some Tours.

5. While the goal of the Grand Tour was educational, a great deal of time was spent in more frivolous pursuits like extensive drinking, gambling, and intimate encounters. The journals and sketches that should have been completed during the Tour were often left quite blank.A Tourist didn’t carry much cash money, because of highway robbers, so letters of credit from their London banks were presented at the major cities of the Grand Tour. Many Tourists spent a great deal of money abroad and due to these expenditures outside England, some English politicians were very much against the institution of the Grand Tour. Once they came back to England, Tourists were enriched by this experience. The Grand Tour as an institution was ultimately worthwhile because it contributed to great improvement in British architecture and culture. The French Revolution in 1789 marked the end of the Grand Tour because in the early 19th century, railroads totally changed the face of tourism and travel across the continent. From Paris, Tourists proceeded across the Alps or took a boat on the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.

6. For those who made their way across the Alps, Turin was the first Italian city they would come to and some remained, while others simply passed through on their way to Rome or Venice. Rome was initially thesouthernmost point they travelled to. However, when excavations of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748) began, the two sites became the major destinations on the Grand Tour.Among the most important writers and painters who visited Italy and mainly Rome and Tivoli we find Wilson, Turner and Constable. Planning The Grand Tour

7. Richard Wilson Richard Wilson (1714 –1782) was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country. He is considered to be the father of landscape painting in Britain. His great, brooding landscapes, all an exquisite study in light and shade, greatly inspired and influenced the works of Turner and Constable. In 1729 Wilson went to London where he began as a portrait painter. From 1750 to 1757 he was in Italy on his Grand Tour. He was the first major British painter to primarily concentrate on landscape. According to John Ruskin, he "paints in a manly way, and occasionally reaches exquisite tones of colour." He concentrated on painting Italian landscapes and landscapes based upon classical literature. His landscapes had a great influence on the paintings of Constable and Turner.

8. In those times, if you were an English gentleman, with any cultural pretensions, you couldn't avoid the European Continent, especially Italy. Wilson went to Venice and remained there for several months, studying the works of Titian and other Old Masters. He met the Venetian Landscape Painter, Francesco Zuccarelli.  Then He travelled through various notable towns of Italy en route to the grand destination, Rome.Wilson stayed in Rome until 1757. Rome was quite a magnet for foreign and local artists.Wilson was inspired by the works of Claude Lorraine as well as by those of contemporary painters like Vernet. He had important patrons and among these Cardinal Albani. Wilson came to Tivoli. By the first century BC, Tivoli (the classical town of Tibur), was a favourite resort with Rome’s wealthier citizens, including the Emperor Augustus and the poet Horace. Wilson’s patrons reveled in his ability to produce lyrical evocations of such classical sites.

9. Among his most famous paintings we find:  • Tivoli; Temple of the Sibyl and the Campagna 1765-70 In this painting Tivoli is seen from across the gorge of the river Aniene, with the Roman plain and the city of Rome itself in the distance. To the left, on the cliff edge, there is a small cluster of ancient buildings. These include the circular Roman Temple of Vesta, and the rectangular Temple of the Tiburtine Sibyl

10. Tivoli; Temple of the Sibyl and the Campagna 1765-70 By introducing the ideal landscapes to the next generation, Wilson played a major role in establishing the British School of landscape painters. Even John Constable, who professed no need to go to Italy, was influenced by Wilson and spoke of own his work “still swims in my brain like a delicious dream.” Turner’s debt was explicit: many years before he made his own trip to the Roman Campagna, he copied the Kimbell painting, though omitting the large tree and figures ( c. 1798, Tate, London).

11. 1.Distant View of Maecenas' Villa, Tivoli about 1756-7 • Oil on canvasThis is the Villa of Maecenas in Tivoli, near Rome. Maecenas had been one of the greatest Roman patrons of the arts. This made him a subject of great interest to eighteenth-century art collectors. But he was also perceived as the personification of decadent luxury. The ruins of his villa therefore embodied both a high point of classical civilization and the cause of its collapse. So this poetic landscape held a moral lesson for the contemporary viewer.

12. Distant View of Maecenas’ Villa, Tivoli about 1756-70

13. William Turner (Joseph Mallord William Turner) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism. Turner was born in London in 1775. He entered the Royal Academy of Art schools, when he was only 14 years old and was accepted into the academy a year later. A watercolour by Turner was accepted for the Summer Exhibition of 1790.He also became interested in oil painting. He exhibited his first oil painting “Fishermen at Sea” in 1796. Turner travelled a lot in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland. He went to Italy where he visited many places of the peninsula, such as Venice, Rome, Tivoli and Naples. In Italy he was impressed by the Costiera Amalfitana. All considered, he was largely a self-taught artist.

14. Turner spent many hours, during his later tour in Europe, copying the works of old masters in the Louvre and other museums and of course, sketching from nature.Turner's talent was recognized early in his life. At 14, he made two sketchbooks filled with drawings of landscapes, churches, houses and trees. He became especially fond of old buildings, castles, churches and ruins that he found during his walking tours in the countryside. The Turner’s main subjects are fires, natural catastrophes and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in “Dawn after the Wreck” and “The Slave Ship”. Turner is connected to the aesthetics of the “sublime”. In the “Sublime” human feelings are inspired by passion and we have an exciting view. For Turner space, which is universal and cosmic, becomes real.

15. Tivoli. 1817 Turner's 'Tivoli' is sometimes cited as an early example of Turner treating light effects in his characteristic manner. Turner's approach greatly influenced French artists of his own generation--and the young Impressionists to follow.

16. Tivoli and the Roman Campagna (after Wilson) – 1798 ( Tate-London) Turner copied the Kimbell painting, omitting the large tree and figures.

17. John Constable John Constable was born in East Bergholt in 1776.He was an English romantic painter and he is principally known for his landscape paintings. His most famous paintings include DEDHAM VALE (1802) and THE HAY WAIN (1821). Constable rebelled against the artistic culture that taught artists to use their imagination to compose their pictures rather than nature itself. Some works of Constable were called a “view of emotion”. In fact, he paints landscapes found in a real world, sometimes linked to his childhood. What Constable painted in the Romantic period is called the “Picturesque”, that is something that, for its beauty, enables subsidiary emotions to be produced and the artist to express these emotions in his work. He was an avant-garde painter, one who demonstrated that landscape painting could take a totally new direction.

18. Constable also completed numerous observational studies of landscapes and clouds, determined to become more scientific in his recording of atmospheric conditions.The most important element of his art is in fact the power of nature and its physical effects;The sketches themselves were the first ever done in oils directly from the subject in the open air;To cover the effects of light and movement, Constable used broken brushstrokes, vigorous brushwork. He also became interested in painting rainbow effects, for example in Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831) and in Cottage at East Bergholt (1833).

19. He believed that the sky was the "key note, the standard of scale and the chief organ of sentiment" in a landscape painting.Constable’s art inspired not only contemporaries like Delacroix, but also the French Impressionists of the late nineteenth century.

20. Hampstead Heath with a Double Rainbow 1836 This painting is an example of Constable’s dramatic style and representation of the elements. There is a powerful contrast between light and shadow, rainbows and clouds.

21. Realizzato dal V° BT: • Andrea Costa • Adrian Cristea • Chiara De Angelis • Elisa Eliseo • Jasmin Gandini • Noemi Petrullo • Cristiana Popescu • Vanessa Proietto • Eleonora Rella • Sara Rinaldi • Angela Scialanca • Alessio Tanfoni • Matteo Zamparini