How to bag the best artist’s view in all of Venice
SIR – The tale of Ken Howard, the RA artist who was told to stop painting in Venice on the grounds that he was causing an obstruction (report, August 29), reminded me that I once had the luck of enjoying the whole of Venice and the Lido as my sketch area – all for nothing.
This was because we were the occupying power immediately after the Second World War. There were no charges for those of us in the RAF, even for staying in the finest hotels such as the Danieli.
It was from the hotel windows that I sketched the statue of one of the military outsiders who helped Venice, as well as the Santa Maria della Salute Church, put up to mark the end of a terrible plague there. Ronald Stein
Brackley, Northamptonshire