LOLA COSTA: RETURN HOME: An interview with exhibition curator

“What shall we plant this year, signora?”

An interview with Federica Parretti on artist Lola Costa

by Linda Falcone

This article was first published in Restoration Conversations

Magazine Issue 6, Autumn 2024

Lola Costa, Fertilizing Cabbages, 1935 - ll Palmerino Cultural Association

Federica Parretti, president of the Cultural Association Il Palmerino and manager of its garden-estate, recounts the life and art of twentieth-century English painter Lola Costa, her grandmother and the former owner of Il Palmerino, who immortalised the estate and the people who frequented it, in highly evocative canvases. Following the first-ever monographic show of Lola’s works at the artist’s home, fittingly called ‘Return Home’, we sat down with Federica to record Lola’s story through four of the works displayed. 

The following are excerpts from that interview, whose intent, in Federica’s words, is to “describe the seasons of Lola’s life and art – her youth, maturity, and her late period – in order to truly see her life”.

The farmers’ cycle, which Lola began as soon as she moved to Il Palmerino in 1935, captures what most struck her: the rhythm of the seasons. Before coming to Tuscany, Lola lived in London and Paris, highly industrialized cities. As a 33-year-old ‘city girl’, she first met Il Palmerino’s labourers, while standing in front of her easel. It was her way of introducing herself to these people, her way of relating to them. Lola did not want to be the aloof signora locked up in the house. For each phase of the harvest, from seeding to threshing, she was expected to give instructions. “What shall we plant this year, signora?” Lola adored nature, and she would work alongside the staff and farmers, to prune the vines (at first with a novice hand) or treat the well water. Beyond the vineyards and olive groves, there were chickens and rabbits to tend to, and in wartime, the building of a pigeon coop, for wild meat was a prized commodity during World War II, when resources were scarce for everyone.

Lola’s diaries – which are now being studied – are filled with her observations, as to who the workers were and what they said and did. One peasant woman gave her a worthy piece of advice, “Don’t ever learn to milk your cow, because you’ll end up having to do it every day, whereas now, you can say you don’t know how.” That was the wisdom of the farming people, their Tuscan attitude. While compiling her archive, we have discovered two notebooks with sketches and drawings linked to studies of local farmers, the peasants, their postures and movements – how they used their bodies. She was not the only painter of her time to focus on ‘labour’ as a central theme. It started with the Macchiaoli, and painters like Lega in the 1800s, and of course, in Italy’s fascist years, ‘work’ was a central part of ubiquitous political discourse – it was in the air.

Lola Costa, Tulips and Playing Cards, 1937 - ll Palmerino Cultural Association

Lola’s 1937 work, Tulips and Playing Cards, recounts the art fellowship Lola and her husband Federigo shared. She was already a painter when they met. Here, she rolls three of Federigo’s paintings into one. They worked in the same studio for twenty years, and painted the same subjects, she from her side of the room, and he from his. Her fruit plate looks thrown together, and it speaks of autumn, with several varieties of apples and inedible chestnuts. The tulips are wild – a rarity at Il Palmerino, even then. She includes Empoli glassware, along with the glass fruit plate, through which we see a table cloth, whose decorative motif recalls the patterns used in frescoes from fifteenth-century Florentine palaces – where Federigo worked as a restorer or to reproduce highly academic replicas of Renaissance art or decorative motifs. She looked at his work with admiration, and measures herself against him. Lola’s painting was freer, more daring, and despite the ‘tame’ nature of her subjects, her mindset as a painter was far more contemporary than that of her husband.

The Garden (1950 c.) is Il Palmerino seen from Lola’s bedroom window, and the variety of greens she uses is striking. Federigo had trained her in brushwork, but here, she goes back to painting with a knife, the way she did before their fellowship. When Lola was widowed in 1952, at the age of 49, she took a stance against Federigo’s family, who urged her to leave the place: Il Palmerino was hers and she would manage it alone. By then, her affection for the estate was visceral. Lei è il Palmerino. Her adolescent children were sent to work, so they could contribute, because for Lola, the property was the thing.

The yellow light in her garden picture is that of Florence. Our lives lie in the shade of that hill, with Florence hiding behind it. We see all of Il Palmerino here, the field, and the forest brush. The Italianate garden leading straight through to the productive fields. She used to call the land her own, ‘my trees’, she would say, and even today, every decision we make about the estate begs the question, “Would Lola like it?”

With Artichokes and Eggs, we see Lola’s definitive style. Questo è lei. The year is 1974, and by this stage, her works are almost incisions. She scrapes the colour away and leaves forms and her brushstroke has become incisive. She is no longer ‘the learner’. Look at the intensity and vibrancy of her purple! That purple lasts a single day before turning yellow, and she captured the moment and froze it in time. We believe it to be a tribute to Vernon Lee. Violet for Violet Paget – Lola never called Lee by her penname, she was signorina Paget at home. In Lola’s mind, despite the author’s death, they shared a house. When Lee lived here, the vegetable garden – and artichokes, specifically – were right outside the front door. Lola’s lemon trees were started by Lee, and they are still alive and well today.

Lola Costa, Artichokes and Eggs, 1974 - ll Palmerino Cultural Association

Lola is painting in morning light, and the canvas brings to mind her ‘still-life philosophy’. Fruit could be eaten only once, but its soul could be captured forever within the fibres of the canvas weave. For Lola, 1974 is post cancer. During her recovery, she took up oil painting again, a media she had abandoned, at Federigo’s death. She worked with watercolour during that more than two-decade hiatus. With her diagnosis, Lola returned to oils. The doctors gave her three months to live, and, as if to spite them, she lived another 33 years.  She regarded her tumour with the same gumption she’d conjured while deciding to stay on at Il Palmerino: “I’m going to prove you all wrong. I’m going to show you what I can do.” That’s the power of positive thinking, Tuscan style.

LINDA FALCONE

The ‘Return Home’ exhibition was part of the ‘Estate Fiorentina,’ an initiative proposed within the City of Florence’s Operational Plan. It marked the start of a three-year programme entitled ‘The Florentine Garden: Early Women Ex-pats and Artists of Today’ organised by Il Palmerino Cultural Association and Calliope Arts Foundation, in collaboration with the British Institute of Florence (BIF). Its calendar includes lectures, exhibitions and a residency grant for contemporary artists. A painter’s Florentine Garden: Lola Costa and Il Palmerino is the title of a lecture-conversation with Federica Parretti at the BIF (6 November 2024), viewable online. The event doubles as the in-town presentation of the debut issue of The Curators’ Quaderno.