The River Rede in Early Spring. Walter John James (1869-1932). Oil on canvas; 14 x 18 inches (35.7 x 45.8 cm). Private collection. Click on image to enlarge it.
The River Rede is a river in Northumberland. Cumberland and Northumberland were favourite spots in England for the Etruscan painters to sketch, likely because one of George Howard’s preferred places to live was his residence at Naworth Castle in Cumbria. Cumberland is a historic county in the far north-west of England, with the county of Northumberland to its north-east, and both bordering Scotland.
Giuliana Pieri has pointed out the similarities of the landscape in these regions to what Howard and Giovanni Costa both loved about the Italian landscape:
Howard’s perception of the Italian countryside as a mirror of his beloved Cumberland is echoed by Costa‘s response to the English countryside, in 1877, after his stay at Naworth: ‘All in all, I am greatly enchanted by perfidious Albion. Your Cumberland impressed me with its magnificence: its trees, landscapes, the ancient castles, and even its great masses of clouds.” This remark points to an often forgotten aspect of Anglo-Italian culture of the post-unification period which Costa and Howard embody so well. The traditional English perception of Italy as a land filled with light and classical repose ‘in which the eye is drawn to the golden distances, the lapis-lazuli and purple of far-off mountains’ gave way to a view which accentuated the common characteristics of the two countries and cultures. [295-96]
James’s The River Rede in Early Spring closely resembles similar Etruscan Italian landscapes. The foreground of river and trees dominates the landscape with the middle distance being unimportant. A ridge of bluish hills appear to the left in the far distance under a blue cloudy sky. — Dennis T. Lanigan
Bibliography
Pieri, Giuliana. “Giovanni Costa and George Howard: Art, Patronage and Friendship.”
The Volume of the Walpole Society LXXVI (2014): 289-307.
Last modified 21 December 2022