Seeing the Dalmatian Coast

In May, I was meant to go to Croatia. I was invited to join a group exploring Croatia’s Adriatic coast and islands on a skippered catamaran. Starting and finishing in Agana, just south of the city of Split, we would spend a week sailing from one secluded beach or historic town to another, stopping to swim, savour the local food and wines, and steep ourselves in an ancient culture.

Then coronavirus happened, international travel restrictions were imposed, and that was that. The trip was off. 

To soften the blow – and whet our appetites for, hopefully, another opportunity next year – the company organizing the trip, Sunsail and The Moorings, organized a virtual tour of the area we’d planned to visit. One Friday evening, in the depths of lockdown, I joined a zoom meeting with my fellow travellers and some of the staff from the Agana sailing base. Sipping a dry white wine spritzed with soda water and munching pieces of grilled eggplant topped with feta – my attempts to recreate at home the atmosphere of a Croatian seaside bar – I watched glorious drone images of the coastline and the various islands we might have visited. 

Meanwhile, base leader Antonio, speaking from Agana, provided a commentary on the best places to swim, dive, kayak, hike, eat out, taste wines and visit heritage sites. We learned that much of the film Mamma Mia 2, supposedly set on a Greek island, was actually shot on location on the island of Vis, one of the stops on our itinerary. I scribbled notes about the beauty of tiny St Clement island, which has the most sunny days per year of any place in Croatia, and about the stunning national park on the island of Mljet.

Thanks to Antonio and his team, I now know exactly what I would like to see if I do get to Croatia next year, or the year after, or whenever it might be. In the mean time, how can an armchair traveller ‘see’ more of this beautiful region? I decided to create my own virtual tour, through works of art that depict this coastline.

First, a short digression on names is needed. We know this country as Croatia, but thirty years ago, it was part of Yugoslavia. In the nineteenth century, the coastal part of modern Croatia was called Dalmatia, and in ancient times the whole area was known as Illyria. Confusing? Yes, but it’s also kind of nice that there are so many names to choose from in talking about this part of the world. I’ve chosen ‘Dalmatia’ for the title of this blog post, because that’s the name used by most of the artists I mention.  

The first image on my virtual art tour of the Dalmatian Coast is a watercolour by the English artist Edward Lear (1812-1888). The painting is titled ‘View near Spolatra’, which is an older name for the modern-day city of Split. It was painted in 1856, when Lear was spending a lot of time in this part of Europe. 

You probably know Lear as a writer of ‘nonsense’ poems like ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, but he was also a very accomplished landscape artist. What amazes me about this painting is the blue. It’s so vivid and it suffuses the whole scene, not just the sea. It’s as if the colour of the water is so intense that it has seeped into the boat, its shadow, the hillside and the town. Lear has painted a blue world. 

It’s also worth noting how much empty space there is in the picture. There are no crowds here, no holidaymakers; in fact, there are no people at all. We can infer that someone must live in the buildings in the middle distance, and someone must own the cattle in the foreground, and someone must be sailing those sailboats on the water, but we can’t see any of them. Nature dominates, and in comparison humans are very insignificant.

The second picture on my tour is by the Austrian painter Emil Jacob Schindler (1842-1892). It’s called ‘On the Dalmatian Coast near Ragusa’ – Ragusa being an old name for the city we know as Dubrovnik – and it was painted in 1888. Dubrovnik is a bit further south than my Croatian cruise would have gone, but it is part of the same coastline.  

I’m drawn to the light in Schindler’s painting. The sunlight seems to glow on those trees and stones, creating a warmth you don’t see in Lear’s picture. Schindler’s painting also depicts a much more civilized, almost classical scene, which includes gardens and sculptures, unlike Lear’s wild coastline.

The third painting I’ve chosen is by the American artist Martha Walter (1875-1976), and it’s called ‘Market Place, Dalmatian Coast’. I haven’t been able to discover exactly when it was painted, but I think it was probably in the 1930s, when Walter travelled extensively in Europe and North Africa.

Martha Walter trained in the Impressionist style of painting, and that shows here. I like her brushstrokes and the way she suggests forms with patches of colour. I also love the fact that this is a painting full of women, which is something you hardly ever see in Western art (at least not women with their clothes on!). 

Walter has painted women working, and while the same warm light we saw in Schindler’s painting illuminates them, it doesn’t turn them into anything classical or ideal. Meanwhile, Lear’s bright blue sea has become the background to their daily lives, rather than being the star of the painting. I feel that in this picture the artist has taken the trouble to really look at the people who call this landscape home. 

Last stop on my art tour is a lovely painting of the harbour at Korčula by local artist Hrvoje Kapelina. There’s that blue again, brighter than ever, but this time in a kind of dance with the other two primary colours. Look at those wonderful reflections! I hadn’t heard of Kapelina before I researched this piece, but I will be sure to visit his gallery in Korčula when I do finally make it to Croatia.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the Dalmatian Coast with me through the eyes of these four artists. Maybe it will inspire you to create your own virtual tour of a place you haven’t yet been able to visit in person – and perhaps it will also inspire you to visit this coastline in reality one day.

For information about skippered, bareboat and flotilla sailing holidays in Croatia, visit Sunsail or The Moorings.