Clarence Bicknell is the Victorian polymath who lived on the Rivera for 40 productive years…the Museo Bicknell in Bordighera, which he founded, is an interesting visit

He spent his summers on the French side of the present border, in Casterino above Tende, and logged and drew over 11,000 prehistoric rock engravings in the Vallée des Merveilles.

Now his decorative and detailed watercolours of Alpine wild flowers are available to the public. The high quality prints are sold framed or unframed as a fund-raiser for charity, in the UK for the Woodland Trust. If you are involved with a charity on the Riviera and would like to raise funds by selling these famous prints then do please contact me.

Broadcaster Clive Anderson

Balladeer rock-star Chris de Burgh – April 2024

Series of the prints have been signed by broadcaster Clive Anderson (who is also the president of the Woodland Trust) and by novelist Frederick Forsyth, playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn and singer-songwriter-balladeer Chris de Burgh. Most of the flowers that Chris has signed (I worked closely with him when I was with A&M Records in the 70s and 80s) are red in colour and the prints framed in red. His hit single Lady in Red of 1986 clicked with the mass market, charted in 25 countries and is a perennial wedding favourite. Clarence’s red flowers are destined for the same success.

Clarence Bicknell, my great great grand uncle, created these extra¬ordinary images for the visitors’ book of the Casa Fontanalba, his summer house high in the French Italian Alps in 1906. He takes the colours and forms of the plants and the petals into his art for the borders and lettering of each watercolour. His brush work is delicate but decisive, botanically accurate and extremely decorative.

Clarence Bicknell takes the colours and forms of the plant for the borders

Clarence Bicknell was born in 1842 in Herne Hill near London, the 13th child of Elhanan Bicknell, whale oil magnate, art collector and the first patron of Turner. His uncle was Phiz, Dickens’ illustrator. After studying at Cambridge University Clarence was an Anglican priest for 13 years before moving in 1879 to Bordighera on the Italian Riviera.

Clarence first went up to the Vallée des Merveilles (now in the Parc de Mercantour) in 1881, only a couple of years after installing himself at Bordighera. Getting to Tende and thence to Casterino, the village he chose as his base, from Bordighera was an arduous day by carriage up tortuous trails and the last 10km by donkey. In 1883 the first tunnel through the Alps, was opened, so the road up the valley of the Roya was improved. Travellers could then make the journey by charabanc from Ventimiglia (just 5 kms west of Bordighera on the coast) to Tende in two hours.

Bicknell surveys the rock engravings on the Chiappes under the Mont Bego

Le Sorcier – engraving in the Vallée des Merveilles

He had gone to the mountains in search of beautiful and rare Alpine flowers but he then heard about some pre-historic rock engravings in the Val Fontanalba and the Vallée des Merveilles, accessible from Casterino (altitude 1,550 metres). In 1885 he took rubbings of his first 50 figures on the great flat brown rocks – Les Chiappes – in the Val Fontanalba under the Mont Bego (2,872 metres).

Initially Clarence rented a house for his summer visits in Casterino from M. Pellegrino, but, as the house was sold in 1902, he decided to build his own. He called it the “Casa Fontanalba” as it was situated at the base of his favourite valley of the same name. Designed by Robert Macdonald, the building is quite different from local architecture, but rather of a British colonial style. It was laborious to build, as materials had to be brought from Tende by mule so it was not ready till 1906; his first creation there was the visitors’ book from which these prints are taken.

The Casa Fontanalba, newly-built in 1906

The inside of the Casa Fontanalba is, for many of Clarence’s followers, the jewel in the crown of all Clarence’s arts and crafts; its interior walls and shutters are decorated throughout with his exquisite paintings. He wrote “As the house was built to enable us to continue our studies of the prehistoric rock figures in the valleys near, the half of which represent horns of various forms and sizes, and which without doubt had to the sculptors a special religious or symbolic meaning, horns have been painted in all part of the house, inside and out, to prevent the entrance of evil spirits and gob¬lins…..Nearly every year some part of the house has been decorated with conventional representations of wild plants, and with proverbs and sentences, mostly in Esperanto”. There are no goblins in the visitors’ book; the 60 watercolour prints on sale are all of graceful and exotic alpine flowers.

Casa Fontanalba Visitors’ Book available

He developed a life as a man of letters, an artist, author, traveller, botanist, archaeologist, philanthropist, humanist and Esperantist. Over 40,000 of his watercolours, rock engraving rubbings, herbaria and other artefacts are in museum and university collections in ten countries round the world. He died peacefully at the Casa Fontanalba in 1918 after 76 fascinating years on earth.

Clarence is better known in Italy than in the UK but his collection of 405 whimsical watercolours in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and interest from other museums might change that. Art reproductions of two of his illustrated books, the Casa Fontanalba Visitors’ Book and the Book of Guests in Esperanto, are available for purchase.

The prints of his botanical watercolours are 12 x 16 inches and framed in a variety of woods and colours or unframed. There are sixty different flowers in the collection, one to a print, and you can get them with or without the celebrity signature (which is in a bottom corner of the image, inside the border) and with or without framing… prices vary therefore from £10 to £250. Right now there is a two-for-one offer; when you make your order at www.clarencebicknell.com/shop please email info@clarencebicknell.com mentioning the code BUZZ2024 and listing reference numbers or the flower names you’d like to get free-of-charge in addition. We are also providing packing and shipping from the UK free of charge to Italy and France (but note that customs duties, if any, would be at your charge)

All images courtesy Marcus Bicknell