CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/12/2019

Anne Desmet's 'A Greek Journey' is dazzling in its simplicity

Featured spread, captioned "27/8/18, Skiathos, morning thunder coming. Slightly down the hill from Agios Nikolaos," is reproduced from A Greek Journey, the Royal Academy’s charming sketchbook-like collection of Anne Desmet’s watercolor drawings made during three Greek summers spanning thirty-four years. The first series was made when Desmet was an art student, in 1984, traveling the Northern Sporades and Aegean Sea with a friend, her uncle and her brother. The second was made in 1985, while traveling with her mother and brother on Alonissos. “One balmy night found us, with my uncle and Greek fishermen friends, on the uninhabited island of Pelagos eating barbequed octopus on the seashore beneath the shining Milky Way and a myriad shooting stars,” she writes. The final series was made in 2018, while traveling with her husband and young children. “The cheerily painted wooden caïques were long gone—replaced by sleek tourist yachts and cruisers—the streets were crowded, whitewashed buildings more numerous. But the landscape and its dazzling colors were unchanged and evoked nostalgic memories. Thus the thirteenth anniversary of my wonderful uncle’s death saw us drinking a toast to his memory from a bar in Patitiri harbor, which seemed to bring my Greek journey full circle.”