Celia Montague: A Light in the Heart

Craig Raine writes:

 

'Not a single gondola. Instead, authentic Venice: boat builders' yards; an ocean-going liner like a dark wedge of wedding cake; pools of water on the pavement; buildings tightly shoulder to shoulder with narrow passageways; a length of Venetian pipe halfway down a building like a necktie; Garibaldi’s green bronze at the end of a vista; those tipsy vaporetto stops; San Salute, her outline subdued by fog, self-effacing, wan as a watermark, composed around the chord of mist.

 

Watermark: the title of Brodsky’s love letter to Venice. He said that Venice is ‘this city of water’. Everything that Celia Montague paints is touched with modest brilliance – but especially her treatment of water. There are eight paintings here of Salute and Santa Maria del Rosario – a suite of pictures sharing a skyline, but each one a unique record of light and mood. There are two night pieces, both excellent. My favourite has an infinitesimally thin line of lit buildings like a broken necklace, crumbs of light like crushed grissini. Above, a sombre lapis sky; below, a dark lapis width of water. The night sky on the right is slightly lighter because of the ambient light.

 

The water is a miracle of brushwork that gives us the movement of the swell. It is, if you look closely, created by the slightly raised edge of the oil paint in four or five places. Not much. Just enough. Perfect.

 

The view of Torcello from Burano is another bravura passage of water – this time the record of water in the wake of, say, a motoscafo or a vaporetto that has passed. It is the aftermath, the fading turbulence, a flourish of sea. The uncovered raw canvas is foam.

A darker green slick captures the curve of swell.

 

Then there is the apparently solid stillness of canal water, opaque and semi-gelatinous. Or water dark with algae and weeds. Or the grey beige of water, mixing horizontals of pallor and darker verticals of rusty reflections. All expert exact effects contriving
to look accidental and spontaneous. I haven’t been to my house in Venice for two years because of lockdown. These paintings brought it all back.'