To the Lighthouse

Gouache on 300gsm watercolour paper, 8 x 10 inches, titled and signed. Unframed.

‘This is the loveliest place in the world,’ Virginia Woolf wrote of Cornwall. ‘It is so lonely.’ She and her sister Vanessa went on holiday to the Cornish coast every summer as girls. They walked, and bathed under the watchful eye of Godrevy lighthouse, relishing their freedom – such a contrast to their more circumscribed lives in London.

Woolf returned to Cornwall over and over as an adult, and even when she wasn’t there she was haunted by it. ‘Went for a walk in Regent’s Park yesterday morning and it suddenly struck me how absurd it is was to stay in London with Cornwall going on all the time . . .’ Cornwall was the inspiration for her great novel ‘To the Lighthouse’, and Vanessa Bell painted a front cover design for it based on the lighthouse they both knew so well.

My own ‘To the Lighthouse’ painting was inspired by the thought of Virginia and Vanessa glorying in their freedom by the sea - although the setting is Devon, with Start Point lighthouse in the background, a similarly beloved place that haunts me when tramping the London pavements.

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