HAVARD The Role Of Travel In The Artists Creative Process

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 1

THE ROLE OF TRAVEL IN THE ARTIST’S CREATIVE PROCESS

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The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 2

THE ROLE OF TRAVEL IN THE ARTIST’S CREATIVE PROCESS

The history, present and entire practice of travels among artists offers a new dimension of

looking at the visual culture of artists. It may perhaps be considered coincidental that the rise and

growth of painting as an important part of European art during the sixteenth to the nineteenth

centuries saw a significant growth of global travels, visits and geographical explorations. In

various ways as brought about by W. Mitchell, a landscape which is a major artistic work is

linked to the form of travels which include grand tours and topographies which apart from being

neutral are also significant as far as place and space are concerned. Mitchell also suggests that

landscape to some extent may be regarded as a form of representation and hence must be

connected to social, political and cultural ideological importance. Considering art in relation to

travels, the dimension of travel provides the means of looking into geographical locations and

genre and facilitates the level of value attached to an artistic artifact. For instance, an oil painting

located at the edge of an empire may be attached more value as people need to travel long

distances in order to see it.

The relationship between travels and art may also be analyzed in form of theories that

explain it. This is by considering the importance that travels have on artistic work, that is, the

reason for the travel, the achievement of the travel and whatever the artist gains or adopts from

the travel. Re-enactment of arts and travels has been on the rise with artists, for example,

William Hodges and Captain Cook explaining the significance their travels in the eighteenth

century especially between 1768 and 1780 had in their artistic works. This paper seeks to come

up with a clearly defined relationship between arts and travels and later give the role that travels

play in the Artist’s creative process.

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 3

Works conducted during the entire sixteenth century were archeological publications and

drawings which were an extension of the works done during the previous two centuries. Some of

these works had been newly introduced in Rome. A new way to display collections was adopted

with the placing of paintings and drawings on the Villa Medici in 1590. When Cardinal Borghese

built the Villa Borghese, he placed drawings and paintings both on the inside and the outside

which are still present to date and part of the Napoleonic plunder. Bernini is one of the artists

who were very familiar with these works. Vincenzo also had a significant collection in his

houses with many of them being architectural works. Two of the leading artists of the

seventeenth century in Duquesnoy and Italy brought antique culture into existence again and

Carlo Maratti who was a painter restored the important Roman fresco that has been discovered in

1650. Hadrian’s Villa was the most significant site to be opened as it produced many artistic

works of all times.

Winckelmann who was an artistic writer knew and had studied extensively most of the

collections and paintings of the seventeenth century. Winckelmann’s knowledge in collections

further improved after the selling of the Cardinal Albani in 1762 which aided his scholarship.

Other older collections were also present at those times, for example, the Polidoro da Caravaggio

of the sixteenth century. The nature of the improved seventeenth-century arts was characterized

by the improved nature of drawings, publications, and collections. This paved way for the neo-

classism error and the prosperity of artists for example Winckelmann. In the period of

renaissance, different artists showed interest in different classical sources. Reubens, for instance,

showed interest in the Torso Belvedere and Bernini was more interested in the work of the first

and second Pergamene schools that existed during the second and third centuries. Poussin, unlike

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 4

Bernini, was interested in sarcophagi and Greco-Roman works. Poussin’s interpretations of

different artistic works played significant roles on the 1750 and 1760 Neoclassicism.

In the late seventeenth century, the field of archeology was further enlarged following the

introduction of several more publications including the influential works by Pietro Bartoli. All of

Bartoli’s works were visual records a style that his son adopted later in improving the work

started by his father. Mostly Bartoli concentrated on wall paintings. The slowly rising

significance of archeological works outside Italy was clearly highlighted by Lorenz’s first

German catalog. These works were primarily concerned with gems and coins which were housed

not only in Berlin but also Dresden. By the middle eighteenth century when Winckelmann was

writing, the field of artistic works had developed to a great extent. For example, Montfaucon had

already finalized the Great L’Antiquite expliquee which acted as a reference to most of the

eighteenth-century publications. Montfaucon’s work was mainly concerned with artistic

inventions rather than a scientific history which most artists published. Drawing sand carvings of

gods and goddesses were present in his artistic work and for this reason, Winckelmann made

positive comments about him not once because his works were very influential. Other artists who

performed similar work were, for example, Ripa whose works, Iconologia were continually

redone throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The French Antiquarian and the Mariette collections are some of the few works that

Winckelmann highly recommended and commented. He terms France and Italy as the homes of

artistic knowledge and a place where most of the best gems and collections originated.

Winckelmann did the Conte de Caylus which mostly concentrated widely on the three different

civilizations. These work expounded further on the unfamiliar artistic materials. The series of

lavish folios was also a significant work that came up with the findings of the Herculaneum site.

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 5

By the mid-seventeenth century, most of the great collections and portable drawings and

paintings had already been assembled together. Rome was the main center for archeological

achievements and most of the portable works were mainly stationed in Rome except the mighty

works which the Medici family shifted to Florence and the Roman sarcophagi which was

stationed in Pisa. It is adequate to say that Rome, Pisa, and Florence were the main centers for

archeological works and classical art.

The Renaissance had few beautiful paintings, carvings, and decorations that were used as

a motivation to many upcoming artists. The Mosaics in Santa Maria in Rome was an inspiration

to artists for example Perugino. Raphael from Vatican was inspired by the grotesque decorations.

Antique decorations were subject to speculation. Baldinucci who had been made famous by his

book, The Famous Life of Bernini gave compromising information in his two lectures where he

compared ancient and modern painting to the advantage of the upcoming artists. In this lecture,

he noted that modern paintings were better than the ancient paintings because the ancient

paintings lacked knowledge, creativity, and interest. Winckelmann is lukewarm on this issue as

some of his works would be considered ancient but informative and creative. Winckelmann notes

that unsatisfying works would be blamed on the users and not the artists as the readers are the

ones who choose how to judge a given painting or collection based on their opinions.

One of the main artistic travels was the Grand Tour. During the 1600, it was made a trend

and important for young artists and aristocrats to pay Florence, Venice, Paris and Rome a visit.

This was in an attempt to improve their classical studies. This led to the introduction of the

Grand Tour which gave the Scandinavians, Americans, Germans and British a chance to

familiarize themselves with the art and practice of Italy and France for the three hundred years

that followed. Travels were costly and unaffordable to everyone. Only a certain privileged class

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 6

would afford these travels, the class which also produced authors, art geniuses, scientists, and

antiquaries.

The Grand Tourist was basically a person with a strong background in Greek and Latin

art and some free time which meant that they had some interest in art. Johann Joachim

Winckelmann who was a German traveler started the practice of art works with his good

knowledge of Greek and Roman languages and backgrounds (Sorabella 2003). He was

introduced to Rome by his friend, Anton Raphael Mengs where he stayed for a very long period.

Most artist-travelers, however, stayed for shorter periods before moving to newer areas

accompanied by their supervisors and teachers and were expected to return back to their

homeland with an overview of the travel and the new things they had learnt in art and

architecture in the visited areas during the travels.

London was mainly the kickoff point for the Grand Tourists and Paris their usual

destination. Most of them traveled to Germany, Switzerland and Netherlands and few of them to

Turkey, Spain, and Greece. The most important lace to visit however was Italy. The Grand

Tourists were in 1744 represented by one of the British travellers, Charles Thompson who said

that he desired to see a state that was very famous and which at one point formulated laws for the

entire universe, which at the present was the largest school of painting and music and contained

the greatest works of architecture. In Italy, the biggest attention was on Rome, whose past

destructions and present achievements were demonstrated to all the visiting artists. Panini’s

Ancient Rome and Modern Rome shows the way Rome had developed and achieved a lot over

the years including the Greco-Roman portraits, churches, and fountains. As a result of the limited

number of museums in Europe before the 1800, Grand Tourists only saw artistic works for

example paintings and portraits whenever they visited private collections and most of them were

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 7

eager to access Roman and Italian art of their own. Architecture was viewed as an art in England

and it is for this reason that people always applied the knowledge they got from villas of Palladio

in Rome and their own houses and gardens.

Many artists benefitted from the support brought about by the grand tourist’s need to start

their travels seriously. Paintings of aristocrats in Rome which were surrounded by staff age were

made by Pompeo Batoni. Battista’s prints of Roman views were also bought by many travelers

including the Colosseum and more recent works like the Piazza Popolo. Some of the tourists

invited fellow artists from their homelands to travel with them making observations on the

artistic works they encountered. Richard Wilson, for instance, drew different locations of Italy in

the seventeenth century.

Generally, the idea of travels and arts can be regarded as a human sense action whereby it

is usually required that for very artistic work to be successful; there must be a form of travel.

However, the aspect of travels may seem problematic in that it may cover a philosophical

approach rather than an artistic approach which may fail to connect the topography and the

geographical locations to the artistic works. It can, therefore, be identified that travels are

relatively essential in the artistic practices because the artist not only gets the chance to meet new

artists but also gets to learn new artistic techniques and practices. It is for these reasons that

major artists and historians from Italy, for example, Bernini, Poussin, Callot, and Reubens

upheld travels to various regions of the world in order to learn new artistic styles and boost their

knowledge and experience in art. In the case of the mid-1850 artists, art and travel combined to

form a suitable re-enactment environment where the artistic history and literature lies as brought

about by Jonathan Lamb. It is a representation that a specific act of travel is, on the other hand,

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 8

an important step in art. Art and travel hence go beyond the representation of landscape and

environment.

The Role of Travel in the Artist’s Creative Process 9

References

Ciejka, J.T., 2011. The Cavaliere Carlo Rainaldi (1611–1691): Architecture and Identity in

Seventeenth-Century Rome. Emory University.

Daniel, S., 2014. Claude Lorrain. Parkstone International.

Fleming, T.G., 2007. Identity and physical deformity in Italian court portraits, 1550–1650:

Dwarves, hirsute, and castrati (Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University).

Hanson, C.A., 2009. The English Virtuoso: Art, medicine, and antiquarianism in the age of

empiricism. University of Chicago Press.

Hoare, A.C., 2010. SALVATOR ROSA AS “AMICO VERO”: THE ROLE OF FRIENDSHIP IN

THE MAKING OF A FREE ARTIST (Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto).

Milam, J.D., 2011. Historical Dictionary of Rococo Art. Scarecrow Press.

Sorabella, J 2003, '“The Grand Tour.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History', The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grtr/hd_grtr.htm

Zirpolo, L.H., 2016. Historical Dictionary of Renaissance art. Rowman & Littlefield.

Zirpolo, L.H., 2010. Historical Dictionary of Baroque art and architecture (No. 42). Rowman &

Littlefield.

Zirpolo, L.H., 2009. The A to Z of Renaissance art. Scarecrow Press.

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