'Positano' reproduced from Trumpets of Montparnasse

1955

Special Collections D921 GD98. Reproduced by permission of the Robert Gibbings Estate and the Heather Chalcroft Literary Agency

New York: E.P. Dutton and Co.

Gibbings’s career as a wood engraver stretched for over thirty years and by the 1950s he was feeling constrained by the black and white austerity of the medium. In 1953, after the publication of Coming Down the Seine, Gibbings spent some time on the Continent as he wanted to live life as a painter. This image is from Trumpets from Montparnasse and represents a hillside in the seaside town of Positano on the Amalfi Coast in Italy where Gibbings lived for a short time. In the first chapter of the book he wrote that he wanted ‘the freedom and the fun of brushes and colour’. There are eight oil paintings featured in the volume.