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European and American expatriate artists. He moved to Capri in
1885, where he made his home in the Villa Narcissus, a former
convent gatehouse in which he recreated the contrasting atmos-
pheres of Pompeii and Morocco.9 Coleman became a leading
figure among the artists on the island, sending regular consign-
ments of pictures back to the United States, and in particular to
the Brooklyn Museum, for exhibition and sale. Like Frederic
Church, who had also created a house in the Moorish style filled
with artefacts and languid artistic atmosphere, Coleman took full
advantage of the views from his studio windows: Church had the
Hudson Valley in front of him, while Coleman surveyed the Bay
of Naples with Vesuvius on the horizon.
From his easel, and at approximately the same distance from
the volcano that Pliny the Younger had been more than 1,800
years earlier, Coleman made a series of pastel drawings that
record the slow progress of the eruption, and the billowing smoke.
At this distance, the eruption is a silent, far-away decorative device,
softly evoked in shades of blue and grey. The subtitle of one of
Coleman's drawings,
A Shower of Ashes upon Ottaviano
, is a
detached acknowledgement of the devastation of the small
town, which became known as 'the new Pompeii'. By contrast,
the ink and gouache study by Eduardo Dalbono, which must
have been drawn on or near the same day as Coleman made his
distanced view, takes the viewer right into the heart of the dis-
aster, sharing the terror and the panic of the inhabitants as they
flee with their belongings. While a religious procession makes its
way through the town, a column of soldiers is marching towards
the mountain. The artist's inscription evokes the horror and, in
particular, the appalling noise: 'Ash, darkness, roaring, panic
envelopes the road from Naples to Resina'¹0 as workmen hope-
lessly shovel ash into baskets and others huddle pathetically
under umbrellas. Far apart though they are in distance and mood,
the Coleman and the Dalbono have the same title,
A Shower
of Ashes
.
In the period when American artists were travelling thou-
sands of miles into Europe and South America and evoking the
landscape and manners they discovered there, Icelandic painters
