oa De reiziger, de schilder en de schrijver

The Traveler, the Painter and the Writer. Travel Books by Jacobus van Looy

Travelling never occurs unmediated. Travelers are guided by pre-existing representations of the Other (discovering or covering foreign realities), by patterns of cultural self-perception and of individual self-observation. The same holds for travel writing, that even shows a double mediation: (1) the mediation of the travelling itself by the selection of what and how the journey is described, and (2) the textual/linguistic mediation of the travelling experience.

This article explores the travel books the author and painter Jac. van Looy wrote about his journeys to the south (Italy, Spain, Morocco), covering the period between 1885 (the year he obtained the Prix de Rome) and 1913. On the one hand Van Looys travelling and his painting and writing were definitely pre-modelled, on the other hand, it is argued, the interaction between his travelling and his artistic activities during his search for a new poetology lead to a departure from these established models.