Dear Friend,

As we begin the countdown to this year’s creative courses season (two weeks to go), we’ve been giving more thought to the nature of creativity and about more ways in which we can help our guests to release theirs. Our inspiring tutors, of course, are a key element, as is the fact that the Watermill is a ‘safe haven’, secluded but not isolated, where people can ‘find themselves’, away from the concerns of everyday life.

As well as providing warm hospitality, delicious food and wine (including freshly made hors d’oeuvres to accompany the evening aperitivi), we encourage stimulating and convivial conversation, and organise evening ‘surprises’, like classical guitar music under the rose pergola, a flashmob of saxophones in the courtyard, or rides through the village on a vintage Vespa. It all helps our guests to enjoy themselves, find their artistic voices and release their creativity. Our mission is to be eudaemonic*.

(Left: Lunch in a traditional trattoria nearby. The writing on the wall says: In wine, there is wisdom. In beer, there is strength. In water – bacteria.
Right: Excited reactions to the Saxophone Surprise

As Mary Lou Cook said: “Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” 

We love being a part of it. And so, too, do our guests, judging by the charming and supportive comments they made about last year’s courses. (See TripAdvisor, for example.)

Bookings for our creative courses continue apace. As we go to press, we have more than 270 bookings for our painting, creative writing, knitting and Italian language courses. Many courses are now full, but overall we still have a dozen or so spaces. There are details in the appropriate sections below. Even if the course you like the look of is fully booked, don’t despair, there are often cancellations, so if you’d like a particular tutor, or a particular date, please get in touch via the Watermill’s Contact Form and we’ll put you on a waiting list.

*If you are a word-nerd like Bill, you’d enjoy, as he does, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s online Word of the Day, which featured eudaemonic in March. It means ‘producing happiness,’ and its antonym is infelicific, ‘productive of unhappiness.’ It might be fun to savour them for a moment or two, but we think the use of such words is rather pretentious, so we promise not to do so again, if that’s not infelicific.

One word we do like is gibbous, which Bill thought came from the poem The Walrus and the Carpenter, recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice (in the Looking Glass). That turned out to be a sulky moon:

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done —
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun."

Lewis Carroll 1871

A waning gibbous moon.
Photograph by Thomas Bresson.
Link here

So where gibbous came from, goodness only knows. Nonetheless, Bill has been boring friends and bewildering Florentine taxi drivers by explaining whether the moon shining over the city is gibbous or not. For, as not everyone knows, a gibbous moon means that more than half of it is visible from the earth. There are two convex sides (unlike a crescent moon, when less than half is visible and one side is convex and the other, concave). Gibbous moons occur twice during each lunar month, in the waxing gibbous phase and the waning gibbous phase.

So now you know! You, too, can bore your friends and bewilder taxi drivers.

Also in this edition:

• will Sofonisba Anguissola soon be joining Artemisia Gentileschi in a Watermill bedroom?
• more wondrous words, from The Leopard
• the mysteries of the semi-colon
• availability of 2024 creative courses, and a preview of our 2025 creative courses

March was Women’s History Month (whoever decides these things?) so, in celebration, the four pictures on the top and bottom of this introductory section show four famous women artists from the past. Top left: Plautilla Nelli; Top right: Sofonisba Anguissola. Below left: Artemisia Gentileschi; Below right: Berthe Morisot. See also our Sofonisba story below.

‘Cor swelp me Mary, I need a break at the Watermill.’
Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins

Bring a partner: there's plenty for them to do

Your partner doesn't have to participate in the course, but they will be able to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the mill and, whenever they want, to come out with you to our beautiful locations.

We also offer a range of Alternative activities for partners on all our courses, as well as a generous £GBP 250 discount if they share a room with you.

Will Sofonisba Anguissola soon be joining Artemisia Gentileschi in a Watermill bedroom?

Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait Painting the Madonna, 1556,
Lancut Museum, Poland. ArtStor digital library. Detail

In her attempts to educate Bill about the scandalous neglect of female artists in the past, Lois has already persuaded him that we should name one of the Watermill’s guest bedrooms the Gentileschi, after the 17th Century baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who has become something of a feminist heroine and whose name trips lightly off many a gender-warrior’s lips.

But he drew the line at Nellie: “No-one wants to sleep in a Nellie bedroom,” he whined, despite being told it was actually Nelli, Plautilla Nelli, (1523-1588), the first known female painter in Renaissance Florence. Apart from the Gentileschi, our bedrooms and suites remain relentlessly male: Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Bronzino, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Ghiberti, Ghirlandaio, Lippi, Uccello and Vasari.

Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555,
The National Museum in Poznań.
ArtStor digital library.

Much to the annoyance of his art historian friends and the female ones in particular, Bill does not like Plautilla’s paintings and is not that keen on Artemisia’s either. So, it was good news when he stumbled some time back on a charming work, The Chess Game, by the Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625).

Sofonisba was born in Cremona in 1532, 60 years before Artemisia Gentileschi, and lived until the ripe old age of 93. She had a groundbreaking and glittering career, including being official court painter to King Philip II of Spain. Her portraits, in particular, were much admired.

The Chess Player features Sofonisba’s three younger sisters, and was painted in 1555 when she was only 23. The personality of each of the sisters shines out, especially the younger one.

The other picture that caught Bill’s eye in March, in an article in DailyArt magazine, was a (sort of) self-portrait. Sofonisba certainly painted all the picture, including herself, but it is ostensibly of a man (her teacher Bernardino Campi), painting her.

Sofonisba Anguissola,
Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba,1559,
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. Web Gallery of Art

Sofonisba was making a feminist point. She was a woman rebel in man’s world, fulfilling her ambition to become a full-time artist.

Art historian Nina Relf tells us in DailyArt: “This work can be called a self-portrait in the sense that it is a painting of the artist and Anguissola is the creator. However, within the scene, the painter we can see is Campi. her painting provides a commentary on gender roles assigned throughout art history – the male as the creator, and the female as the subject. Here, Anguissola breaks the rules and reverses these roles.”

She adds: “In the 16th century, art was a predominantly male occupation. At that time, Sofonisba Anguissola did not comply with roles that were traditionally assigned to women, such as a mother and a homemaker. Instead, as a strong and independent woman, she decided to fulfil her ambition of becoming an artist.. By doing this, she paved the way for other female artists such as Lavinia Fontana, who followed in her footsteps and also went on to paint portraits of the nobility and history paintings.”

You can read about Sofonisba in the online DailyArt online magazine by clicking here.

So, why is her name not better known? We think the answer may lie in the name itself. Sofonisba Anguissola is a bit of a mouthful (mind you, so is Artemisia Gentileschi, and she is slipping easily off many tongues these days).

In the next year or so we should be doing some reordering of the Watermill apartments, and we think the time is ripe for another female artist to feature in our room names. So, watch this space: Will Sofonisba join Artemisia in a Watermill bedroom?