The Wilfrid de Glehn estate is represented by
David Messum Fine Art Ltd.
London
England
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Dance of the Nymphs, (The Landing Place), Corfu,
oil on canvas, c. 1910
Those ‘wishes’ would turn out to be somewhat divergent, however. Sargent pursued many of the themes he had first developed during his stay in Majorca. In The Olive Grove (Indianapolis Museum of Art) a group of Corfiot villagers are at work collecting the olives beneath the atmospherically hazy trees while in Vespers (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) an intense-looking priest stands under a pergola outside his church. Sargent would exhibit the work at the Royal Academy in the following year. Eliza Wedgwood, the only member of the group not to paint, also occupied herself with the day-to-day life of the contemporary islanders, attempting to learn Greek in the mornings and also becoming fascinated by the traditional dress still worn by many of the Corfiots.
Olive Trees, Corfu, watercolour, c. 1909
According to Jane’s letters, Wilfrid’s interest in the island took a different turn, as he became increasingly preoccupied with its occurrence in classical literature. She recounts how Wilfrid on one occasion, convinced that he had found the precise spot where Ulysses (or Odysseus) was lured ashore by the Sirens, pedalled off at great speed with his painting equipment determined to paint it. Indeed, as several guidebooks of the period noted, the island of Corfu was often identified with the island called Scheria, home of the Phaeacians, in Homer’s Odyssey, and “many modern travellers … gratified themselves in tracing points of fancied resemblance between the Homeric description and the present landscape”.
