Vineyard in Cyprus

A member of the London group since 1915, the artist was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy. His paintings were used by the Cyprus Government Office in London to attract tourists, especially his views of Kyrenia. Ernest Whatley was asked to portray Cyprus for advertising purposes. His watercolour, ‘the vineyards of Cyprus’, forms part of traditional colonial art. Whatley produced a panoramic view of the Pissouri village vineyards with the Troodos mountains in the background. With the opening of the Commonwealth Centre as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951, to succeed the old Imperial Institute, an ambitious exhibition was mounted which featured a large diorama of the vineyards painting. In Whatley’s scene, the terraced hill sides form patterned plots of cultivated land behind the primitive road defined by a low stone wall, which prevented animals from entering the cultivated land and grazing in the vineyards. A line of cofines, the large woven baskets that were filled with grapes, await transportation by donkey to the depot. Women are working in the vineyards. It is summer, July and August which are the months for harvesting. The woman in the foreground is wearing a protective white kerchief which covers her head, the back of her neck, and falls over her shoulders. Her face is sun burnt. This is a rustic scene bordering on the exotic, but realistic. It seeks to appeal through its ethnographic content.