Drawing Sorrento (2): a maturing relationship

After my first solo visit to Sorrento, in a cool week in April 2005, I began to book cheap flights to Naples, always through British Airways, whenever the grey life of England seemed to be closing in on me. I always knew that I had that eticket tucked away, like a forbidden bar of chocolate, in a drawer, ready to whisk me off to the Mediterrranean. Though perhaps "whisk" is not quite the word - I always travel on that morning flight for which you have to be at the airport at 5am or so, even earlier now....

My summer visit in 2005 was for 23 days - and I really learned my way around in that time. The buses, trains and boats took me up and down the coast with my sketch book and camera, always returning to Sorrento in the evenings to go to my favourite restaurant that year, a place called "L'Osteria del Buon'Aventuro" This old building off the Piazza San Fancesco housed a ristorante in which the manager, Nello, was flanked by two other middle aged Neapolitans, Renato and Antonio, who provided the live entertainment for tourists and others several nights of the week.

I first wandered in there one evening in August when every other place was full or booked. I was welcomed enthusiastically because l'Osteria is off the main thoroughfare, up a side alley, and gets little passing trade. Nello, as the English speaker who had worked in London for some time in the '80s, was the barker who stood outside ushering potential clients down into the wood panelled stone vaulted cellar which housed the restaurant. I normally resist this kind of invitation but I was very hungry that first evening.

I decided to eat at one of the tables that stood outside, however, because it looked hot and crowded downstairs. There on that first evening I met a charming Irish couple who became the first buyers of my Sorrento pictures. They opted to buy two of the originals, rather than the cheaper prints, and I was pleased to sell to such an appreciative couple - they told me exactly where they would site the framed pictures in their house.

In the hot dusty evenings of Sorrento in August I would sit at my table on the pavement outside L'Osteria and order the specialities of the house: heaped plates of mussels - they did the best steamed mussels in Sorrento; tomato salads scattered with aromatic basil leaves; prawns; grilled courgettes and aubergines and fresh sardines. The view was not conventionally romantic but it was very Southern Italian - a peeling stuccoed wall with an arched gate through which you could just see some orange trees, and a row of scooters.

At about ten o'clock in the evening there would be a rasping, clattering sound and Antonio would drive his battered car into the alley and park it, swiftly, accurately and with a flourish, in a space next to the wall which allowed about 3 centimetres' leeway. He would loop a chain around it for some reason - perhaps it didn't have a lock.

Usually Renato would already be in the resturant downstairs, performing for the clients. Renato was a guitarist and a good one. He played old and new Neapolitan songs, Sinatra and Dean Martin favourites, Beatles songs, and was the typical "You hum it and I'll play along with it" kind of musician. It was something of a relief when Antonio arrived, however, because Renato was no singer and Antonio had a magnificent tenor voice that drowned Renato out altogether.

As August wore on, I ventured downstairs and began having my solitary dinner at one of the gold brocade covered tables facing the entrance to the cellar from the street. This table became "mine" and I was treated as a regular, which I had become. Nello's beautiful sixteen year old daughter would serve me and ask what I had drawn that day, because I always had my sketch book with me. One evening I drew a portrait of her as she dashed about serving and calling orders in her husky smoker's voice (I had seen her with her taking cigarette breaks when I sat outside). I gave it to her and then I had to do a picture of Renato as well, who swore undying love if I would do so.

I finally brought my paints in on a quiet night and painted a scene of the interior, with Renato and Antonio playing and singing, Nadia the Croatian girl who ran the till and Nello's daughter in the background. In the foreground, of course, the gold brocade table cloth and my glass of red wine. I gave it to Nello and I don't know what happened to it later.

When I went back to the Osteria the following summer, it was under new management. The plates of mussels were much smaller and there were some among them that had failed to open (a dangerous sign, as all mussel aficionados know). Renato was nowhere to be seen and no one knoew where he had gone to, though Antonio turned up as usual and promised to put Nello in touch with me. To my surprise, he did, and a day or two later Nello bought me dinner at another resturant in which he had friends. He hinted at a story of betrayal and disappointment, with many shrugs and sideways looks, which apparently explained why he no longer ran l'Osteria dell'Bouon'Aventura.

I am sorry that I can't here include a drawing from my time as a regular at the Osteria, but I gave all of them to the people who formed their subjects. After their first surprise that I stayed so long in Sorrento on my own, they welcomed me and included me in their sessions of music and song, as far as my limited Italian and their limited English would allow. I can list among the most embarrassing moments of my entire life my rendition of "Yesterday" to the crowded restaurant, one Wednesday evening.

It was in August 2005 that I first went on the ferry to Capri from Sorrento. The atmosphere was hot, dusty, unreasonably crowded and anything but picturesque when I arrived at the top of the funicular railway that runs up from the port to Capri town. I was not in a very forgiving mood, either, because I had had to point out to the boy in the biglietteria for the funicular that I had given him a twenty euro note, not one for ten. This was the first time that I had been treated like that in this area and I felt let down. I wondered how many other times it had happened without my noticing - but I preferred to believe that it was a symptom of the frenetic commercialisation that permeated the atmosphere of Capri.

Capri is naturally beautiful, a large island with a plateau at its centre and great sweeping cliffs rising from the shores. I have only been there for one afternoon in three summers, so little did I enjoy trailing around with a thousand other foreigners among the fashionable shops in Capri town. It was difficult to find the path to the Villa Jovis on the cliff overlooking Capri town and by the time I started up the steep track it was late in the afternoon. I couldn't face the climb and settled for a photograph across to the cliff from the terrace outside the fiunicular. The villa was built by the Roman Emperor Nero and is in a fine defensive position. The path is steep and winding and I've promised myself that I shall go there in a cool season and climb up to admire the view, but I have been sidetracked each year by my explorations of the mainland coast towns.

This is the gouache painting that I made when I went back to England, from the photographs I took that day. I've called it "Bougainvillea, Capri" because the flowers and the lovely earthenware pot they are growing in was the main inspiration for the composition. Below is another in what became a series of ten paintings in gouache, all about 50cm along their longest side.

This painting, also completed in the winter of 2005 to 2006, was inspired by a photo that I took from the side of St Stefano's Cathedral in Capri. I've called it variously "Baroque v Classical" and "S. Stefano and the Bank of Italy". I love the baroque facades of Italian churches and here the religious building and the secular one balance each other. I've avoided including people in these paintings: on Capri there were too many people and I preferred to point my gaze upwards at nature and the architecture.

That long visit in August 2005 taught me that Sorrento on one's own is best taken in short doses. I became just a little sorry for myself as each evening I made my solitary way back to my apartment. It was a huge flat for four, into which Sorrento Holidays had transferred my booking with no prior warning, instead of the little one-room place off the Piazza Tasso which I had booked from England. It became my temporary studio and had lots of space for me to spread my growing array of sketches out to view my progress, but it wasn't very cosy.

As I walked back along the dark section of the Corsa Italia late one evening I was accosted by a young man who asked me plaintively to come home with him. He was downcast but not surprised when I said "No" and hurried on. The incident made me realise how out of place I must seem in this town full of couples and families, however much at home I felt myself.

To see more of my paintings, visit http://www.janwindle.com