John Gage wrote the section introduction and we shared the writing of the catalogue notes for the section,Sind Briten Hier? translated into German immaculately by Heide Grieve. Apart from the usual flim-flam I tried to balance the images on show with first hand accounts in travellers' diaries and letters, tracing the extent to which artists capitalised upon favourite vistas or accepted the guilding hand of the Guide Book.

I found interesting correspondences between painting and published texts (Crome and Hazlitt, Bonington and Mrs.Dawson Turner). Travellers such as Bertie Greathead noticed telling details in their diaries, particularities later depicted frequently by English artists. Turner's depictions of Venice in one year provided an image of the Customs House(the source of the City) , together with that of the Cemeteries. John and I made much of Dicky Doyle's Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson, now reproduced here in full.

Needless to say John was a constant inspiration, as was working with Heide with whom I also had worked as a WRVS volunteer in Norwich's main hospital.

 

THE COMPLETE CATALOGUE IN SINGLE PAGE FORMAT WITH JOHN'S INTRODUCTION