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00:00Can you feel the sun on your face? It might be paint on canvas but for centuries artists have
00:15broadened our horizons by painting theirs. Gallery walls were windows to faraway lands,
00:24captured, tamed, sometimes misrepresented by the artist's brush. Many of those images
00:31inspired viewers to become visitors and turned the places they depicted into the
00:37travel destinations of the modern era. But there's more to travel than simple
00:43tourism. Using my own eyes I want to look at what they saw to see what I see.
00:49All my life I've traveled. I was born in Dublin and spent my early childhood in
00:56Atlanta, Georgia. I have family in Nigeria, I've lived in Japan and spent time in the
01:02Caribbean and South America. Travel has always been part of my life.
01:09But this year our worlds have become smaller. We've been confined to rooms,
01:16streets, parks, gardens if you're lucky. Wouldn't it be nice to get away?
01:33This is the Ulster Museum in Belfast. Architecturally it's fabulous. A blend of
01:39classical columns and brutalist chunks that shouldn't work but somehow does, set in
01:46verdant botanical gardens. Step inside and it's a smorgasbord of curiosities. We're
01:54greeted by three wicker dragons hung mid-flight. Below them five floors packed with
02:02treasures from the worlds of science, of history and of art.
02:09These centuries-old temple bells would have been used to communicate with spirits in ancient
02:20China. Now they speak to us about a distant time and country. In lockdown, however, one
02:29exhibition sadly gathered dust. Titled Changing Views, it examined the role of the artist as
02:36traveller. Ironic really, as COVID-19 frustrated travel plans to get to see it, mine included.
02:44But let's take this journey together. In these days of travel restrictions and quarantine,
02:51what better way to indulge our wanderlust than through art? We begin our travels with tourism
02:59in its very earliest form. In fact, the very word tourist was coined in the 1700s with the
03:10birth of the Grand Tour. A rite of passage for wealthy aristocrats, mostly men of course, they
03:18would spend anything from a few months to several years passing through France, Switzerland,
03:25Greece and, of course, Italy. Broadening the mind. Travel was for the wealthy and they wanted
03:33you to know where they had been. Returning tourists brought Italy back with them from artists they
03:42had hired to take the view. And so, thrillingly, we got to see what they saw. The beauty of Florence,
03:53Venice, Naples and the centrepiece, the must-have travel pictures, had to be of Rome. The most famous
04:04of these are by the Italian artist Piranesi. A draftsman, printmaker and architect, Giovanni Piranesi
04:14was renowned for his unmatched ability to accurately depict buildings. He drew hundreds. The Ulster
04:21Museum has over 50 in its own collection. Not only could he draw, the man was a genius at etching too. Working
04:31only in acid and metal, he manipulated scale and light. And they are a total joy to look at.
04:47Here in the Piazza Navona, nothing much has changed. This was made in the late 1700s, but today you
04:56will still find street entertainers. The fountain of the Four Rivers still sits at the centre.
05:03You can hear the noise in this picture, smell the square, feel the energy.
05:12Piranesi was a master at bringing places alive. In the Piazza di Spagna there was room for some Italian bling.
05:24Men wearing tricorns, three-pointed hats, popular at the time. Known as cocked hats because the
05:31brims were turned or cocked up, allowing stylish gentlemen to show off their wigs. And Piranesi
05:38shows us his technical skills. On the Spanish steps, the sun casts a long shadow. Look at those lines.
05:47This is a master draftsman at work. Just around the corner is the Trevi Fountain, with rocks and horses
05:57all rendered in exquisite detail. But it is to the artist's credit that he was just as interested
06:04in the other side of life. The poverty, the lameness, the drunkenness that seems to echo the decay of the city.
06:14This is the kind of revelry we still see on a Saturday night, or used to, before the curfew is enforced by an invisible enemy.
06:23For Piranesi, the ruins of Rome became a metaphor for the imperfection and transience of human existence.
06:34Views of the grand tour like those by Piranesi really capture the full spectrum of human experience.
06:40You know, from great wealth and privilege to more everyday struggles. And there's a truth to be gained from seeing them in galleries.
06:48To me, these are really important objects of social history, documenting real lives and capturing a time and a place,
06:56the highs and the lows, from beggars to barons.
07:00A softer, more romantic type of artist, though, was also on the move, taking us into worlds we might find more familiar.
07:13The style is capital P picturesque.
07:21The picturesque is where we start to see elements of romanticism, wild rather than tamed nature,
07:28an emphasis on emotion rather than order, beauty in the irregular.
07:35As the railway spread in the 19th century, more artists could afford to move around of their own accord.
07:42What they saw was different.
07:45Rural scenes, their own personal areas of interest.
07:50These paintings are by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Louis Huber.
07:54I like Hubert's work. It feels real, warm and engaging to me.
08:03Two people in the landscape, on a walk. Human figures in nature.
08:08Huber gives us good old rustic chewiness, but there is roughness and sudden variation.
08:21Irregularity of form, colour and lighting.
08:26At times, his urban landscapes resemble backgrounds from a 1950s Disney cartoon.
08:31This one looks like a movie set.
08:35And here again, human figures dwarfed first by the huge building and then the mountain beyond.
08:42A pool of heavenly sunlight shining on the far bank like God's own spotlight.
08:47In an era of industrialisation, it is unsurprising that human beings yearned for the tranquil nostalgia of an image like this.
09:03A snow-capped peak in the Alps.
09:05It's a half-finished sketch, but it's also a powerful new force in art.
09:11A new way of seeing.
09:13This is a page torn from the sketchbook of John Ruskin.
09:18Ruskin believed in observing, and then rendering imaginatively, what he had seen.
09:24And more importantly, what he had felt.
09:27This is art as power, emotion.
09:30One of the pieces from the Ulster Museum's collection that most moved me.
09:42Sketched confidently in pencil, Ruskin adds shadow to create canyons and gorges, giving heft and mass to this majestic giant.
09:50A smear of blue across the lower slopes.
09:54A hint above to suggest a clean, cloudless sky.
09:59And the peak?
10:01A wash of umber and you can almost feel the warmth of the low morning sun.
10:06The final touch, white pigment, to dust the top with snow, crisp and sweet as icing sugar.
10:16There's something intimate about pages from an artist's sketchbook, which I love.
10:22We are witnessing Ruskin's mind at work.
10:26Sketching, planning, working things out.
10:31Just below the mountain, a rehearsal drawing of one of its tree-lined ravines.
10:36Over to the right, some scribbled words.
10:39A tantalizing glimpse inside his mind.
10:41You can just about make it out.
10:45Perpetual covering with invisible lines, like line engraving.
10:51Outline through touring something.
10:55And below everything, at a 90 degree angle, Ruskin has sketched a small church.
11:02Perhaps something he encountered later the same day, during his alpine wanderings.
11:07These works are unfinished.
11:10They were never even meant for public display.
11:13But it is that intimacy, that peak behind the curtain of his thought process,
11:19that pulls us even closer to his attitude towards art.
11:22For Ruskin, travel was essential.
11:26Ignore the great masters, he said.
11:29Get out there, into nature, feel its power.
11:32Of course, for Ruskin, a white Englishman at the height of the British Empire,
11:45it was easy to encourage people to travel.
11:48The world was an Englishman's back garden.
11:50He could stroll through a country 5,000 miles away, as if he owned it.
11:56Because he did.
11:58He had taken it, by force.
12:01This is British-ruled Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka.
12:06The artist was a Belfast man, Andrew Nicol.
12:09By the time Nicol visited in the 1840s, Ceylon had just ended 40 years of bloody battles,
12:18and the British were firmly in control.
12:23You don't get any of that from this painting.
12:26None of the bloodshed or misery the land and its people endured.
12:29What we do have is an artist enraptured by the light,
12:35charmed by boats that looked so exotic to his Western eyes.
12:42You can almost feel Nicol's joy in being able to reach for colours from his palette he hadn't used in years.
12:48And never in Belfast.
12:54He has the skills to charm a contemporary viewer, too.
12:57I love the flecks of white in the surf, gently rolling onto his beach.
13:03And the palm tree inhabiting this lonely shore, strangely reminiscent of a ladies' van.
13:12The son of a shoemaker, Nicol was invited to Ceylon by the colonial secretary,
13:17and it must have been an intense experience for someone more used to walking the beaches of Northern Ireland.
13:22Nowadays, travel to sun-drenched beaches is within the grasp of many of us.
13:31Maybe not quite now at the moment, but presumably those days will return.
13:36However, for Nicol, this would have been a huge assault on the senses.
13:40You know, for somebody from his background, which was quite humble, this type of access to travel wasn't something that was easily available.
13:49And the climate of Northern Ireland is a far cry from that of the tropics.
13:53Belfast men seem to be getting about quite a lot by the turn of the century.
14:03One of them I'd like to spend a little time looking at is one of my favourites.
14:07Sir John Lavery.
14:11I love Lavery's work, and he is well represented here at the Ulster Museum.
14:16For me, his paintings bring history and society to life.
14:20His depictions of women are fascinating, in particular those of his wife Hazel,
14:25an intelligent, spirited and famously beautiful American, 24 years his junior.
14:30Lavery painted her more than 400 times, including one portrait that appeared on every Irish banknote for over 70 years.
14:43John Lavery was born working class, but through his skill as a portrait artist, he infiltrated the upper echelons of society.
14:52And just like Nicol, he discovered the world opens up for you when you hobnob with the rich and powerful.
14:57Lavery travels to Tangier in Morocco.
15:04Like his contemporary Matisse, he responded with enthusiasm to the clarity of the light,
15:10the low horizons and wide expanses of bright blue sky.
15:14In this painting, however, the city is bathed in moonlight,
15:19painted in cool tones of grey, white and lilac, broken only by the faint glimmer of small fires.
15:25Mysterious hooded figures huddled together on a rooftop.
15:31A cooking fire burns beside them, and what might be a shisha pipe smoulders on a low table.
15:37When I first saw this Lavery painting, I thought it must be a drawing room in London or Dublin.
15:46Gilt mirrors, crystal chandeliers, thick carpets.
15:51But this too is part of his Tangier adventure.
15:54Titled the Greyhound, it shows the interior of the British legation in that city.
16:01Relaxing in the chair is the British minister, Sir Reginald Lister.
16:07His polished leather boots and self-assured pose over the obedient dog of the title, tell you who is in charge here.
16:15It seems the colonial takeover even went as far as imposing your interior design on a foreign country.
16:24For men of privilege, life in North Africa was not that different from life back in Ireland.
16:29The only difference was the sunshine and jacaranda flowers outside the window.
16:36I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed, if not surprised.
16:40Lavery travelled all the way to Morocco and decided once again to paint a wealthy, privileged Englishman in a room indistinguishable from one in a London gentleman's club.
16:57Once more, the colonies merely provide a backdrop for Englishmen to act out their self-appointed civilising mission.
17:07The white man's burden, as it were.
17:12By the 20th century, artists began to make foreigners themselves the main focus of the pictures.
17:19This print, titled A Greek Lady, is by William Walker.
17:23It is done in a combination of etching and dry point, two printmaking techniques that required great skill.
17:33The clean lines of her sandaled feet give way to fabulous texturing on her skirts.
17:40As we move up, the folds of her dress gently suggest her figure beneath.
17:47Hair falls loose over bare arms.
17:50And just a hint of a smile plays at the edges of her lips as she looks coyly aside.
17:57For its time, this was quite a risque picture.
18:01Woolcott reportedly dressed in togas while in Greece.
18:08Clearly he was a man who went the whole hog with his cultural immersion.
18:12Skillful though it is, this teeters for me on the edge of something else.
18:20Orientalism. The othering and sexualising of an Eastern woman.
18:25Does it make a difference then, if the artist is a woman?
18:36This lithograph is from 1939, by the American painter Doris Rosenthal.
18:42It was made on one of her numerous trips to Mexico, where she produced hundreds of sketches and paintings depicting the indigenous people and their everyday life.
18:52Rosenthal called this one chiquillos, or kids.
18:58It shows three children standing in front of a native plant, with some corn husks peeping in from one side.
19:05Working with a waxy crayon on limestone, Rosenthal has picked out their features, dark oval eyes and sleek black hair.
19:13And the way she's drawn these portraits seems to suit them entirely.
19:21Soft, charcoal-like tones result in images that are stylised and romantic, yet they have an honest, earthy feel to them.
19:30But what really stands out for me is that these children are looking directly at the viewer.
19:38Again in this one, Plum Girls, we encounter a direct gaze that seems almost to go through you.
19:50I can't decide whether the girls' expressions show fear, defiance or just boredom.
19:59I wonder also whether it was easier for these Mexican children to sit for their portrait because the artist was a woman.
20:09It's a troublesome area in countries more distant to ours.
20:13And it begs the question, are we walking a fine line between depiction and voyeurism?
20:18And so I would like to come home for a bit to a part of the world I have visited.
20:34These are the Arran Islands off the west coast of Galway.
20:40They are very remote, beautiful, a stark, hard place to live.
20:47The painting is by the Irish artist Sean Keating.
20:51It's called Slán Láta æhér, or Goodbye Father.
20:57And it depicts a scene of departure on Innishir, the smallest of the Arran Islands.
21:03A priest is returning to the mainland.
21:07His parishioners have gathered on the beach to bid him farewell.
21:12Traditionally, a priest would be the central figure in such a scene, but Keating has shown only his back.
21:20There is a sense that it is the priest who defers to the stoical toughness of the islanders and the wild beauty of the landscape.
21:27Meanwhile, the boatman struggles to keep his vessel from drifting out to sea.
21:35The heavy Atlantic sky and crashing waves heighten the quiet solemnity of the leave-taking.
21:43And the horizon, the priest's destination, perhaps standing in for that final destination, is as flat and unknowable as death.
21:53There's a muscularity to the way Keating has applied the paint, and it somehow chimed with the granite hardness of the men, weathered by storm and sea.
22:06I have to say it though because it begs the question, where are all the women?
22:14200 years earlier, a woman spent three months walking the cliff path every day to this location to produce these beautiful paintings.
22:32In doing so, she changed the course of history.
22:37This is the Giant's Causeway.
22:40It's one of the Earth's great natural wonders.
22:4340,000 basalt columns rising up from the ground like giant building blocks.
22:49This being Ireland, there is of course a legend about how they got here.
22:53The famous giant Finn McCool built himself this cobbled pavement across the Irish Sea, so he could fight the Scottish giant Ben and Donner.
23:05The reality, maybe, maybe not, of rocks forced through the landscape by cooling cracking lava isn't quite as romantic.
23:14I'm sure there's nothing as romantic as us Irish.
23:22The pair of paintings are small, painted on vellum or animal skin.
23:27Working on this scale, the artist would have had to use a tiny brush.
23:32Not easy when you're painting in the open air, battling the elements.
23:36On the very edge of the North Atlantic, the wind whips around as if Finn McCool himself is trying to blow you out to sea.
23:45Here, the sunlight hits the hexagonal columns, picking out the shape of each individual stone biscuit in their tottering towers.
23:54Far off in the distance, two figures are silhouetted in a pool of almost celestial light.
23:59A group of young pleasure seekers enjoy a picnic beside a pool.
24:06Three young men fish off one of the causeway's edges.
24:10And in the foreground, a scene that looks suspiciously like a pair of builders figuring out a way to steal some of the huge stones for a construction job.
24:19In the 1730s, when these images were painted, the art world was almost entirely male.
24:28Academies, the arbiters of style, rarely accepted women.
24:33So they couldn't easily train or exhibit.
24:37But these images were painted by a woman, Susanna Drury.
24:41Right at the bottom, so minuscule it is almost imperceptible without a magnifying glass, Drury has signed her name on a basalt block.
24:52This was a bold move in a man's world.
24:56At the time, women couldn't even buy paint without a man's signature.
25:02And these images aren't just important for their artistic value.
25:06In 1771, the French geologist Nicolas Demarest used engravings of them to support his theory that structures like the causeway were of volcanic origin, rather than man-made.
25:20People began to visit the causeway, keen to see it for themselves.
25:25Today, more than a million people a year come to see these stones.
25:29I'm so proud of Susanna Drury, you know, a determined female artist in a very male world.
25:38Against all the odds, this spirited amateur expanded our scientific understanding of the world, and encouraged others to visit a very special corner of Ireland.
25:50The final work I want to show you is also by a woman, though this one interestingly does the reverse, imploring us not to travel.
26:03Elaine Schemmelt is a contemporary artist whose practice in recent years has turned more and more to environmental activism.
26:13This print is an outline of the island of South Georgia.
26:17Situated on the edge of the Antarctic, South Georgia is a place loaded with significance.
26:25It was once a base for seven whaling stations, home to a grisly orgy of blood and blubber, synonymous with the destruction of the natural world.
26:35But in recent years, the island has become a bellwether for environmentalists, a barometer for the effects of climate change.
26:49Schemmelt invites us to look at this simple, beautiful object, an embossed line on cards, and engage with a terrifying idea.
26:58But unless things change, unless we change, there will be fewer places for us to travel to at all.
27:10It demonstrates one of the most profound ways in which our world has changed.
27:16All that exploration, and the exploitation of the world's resources, has created a world in which we need to travel less.
27:28Even after a lockdown, where the skies were empty of planes for weeks, we cannot afford to become complacent.
27:36You know, there's an interesting circularity at work here.
27:40With COVID-19, our world is under attack from an invisible foe.
27:45And the safest way to travel to foreign lands might once more be through pictures.
27:51Granted, these might be online rather than oil paintings.
27:55But in many ways, we find ourselves back in similar times to those when these works were created.
28:02Time will tell if our appetite for foreign travel has been irreparably damaged or permanently sated.
28:10And in the fight against global warming, escape and adventure have become double-edged.
28:15I still want to travel, but not irresponsibly.
28:21But one thing's for certain, with so many permanent reminders of journeys of the past, our minds will never be tethered.
28:29WHAT E 이를 toner halo
28:30Because of the winter must never be tethered
28:33Because of the beauty of riders that grow, ever be tethered.
28:34What they want and empowerment of train and conversion is being so un cristain
28:36And that the happiness that the deÄźils that still live to find me for?
28:39Even both of the time, one thing seems to is to afford to change towards remote Earth,
28:40Everyone isointing to your heart that we are sharing,
28:41And in amazing ways, practice ourselves, coping, being so healthy as well
28:42As you realize, like, have or need the opportunity of Gandalf photography and organisations
28:46I know has been very successful in this journey,
28:48For one hand that sometimes some of the time that sunlight is in front of the vision,
28:49Teaching positive things to be effective,
28:51We can never be together with us.
28:52What things will never be tethered.
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