AN ISLAND HAVEN

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 149, 19 March 1936, Page 5

AN ISLAND HAVEN

Artist’s Impression of Sunny Majorca.

In search of sunshine, and with the intention of spending some months in New Zealand, devoting most of her time, to painting, Miss Nancy Thomson, a well-known water-colour artist, arrived at Auckland last week by the Strathnaver. Miss Thomson is known to many New Zealanders, having spent several months here some years ago. painting in both the North and South Islands. She has spent much of her life travelling and staying in various places for a year or more, in order to understand the atmosphere of the place. She is particularly fond of Italy, but the present economic situation there renders the exchange rate prohibitively high, and most tourists cannot afford to enter.

She is particularly fond of Majorca, one of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, a land where there is little or 110 unemployment, because the inhabitants do . all the work by hand, even to the cracking of stones on the road.

Miss Thomson recently spent a year in Palma de Mallorca, the chief town of Majorca, for the purpose of painting, and was most enthusiastic about the beauties of the spot. Large numbers of retired English people, Miss Thomson explained, on her arrival in New Zealand, had found a haven in Majorca, and were availing themselves, of the low cost of living there. Houses could be rented for as little as 5/- a week, and fresh fruit and vegetables were plentiful and cheap. One section of the town was almost entirely composed of English villas, while many English people lived on their yachts in the spacious harbour, paying only 3d. a day for mooring. Cruisers and yachts of many nationalities frequently put into Majorca, and millionaires on holiday in the South of France would often call in in their yachts. “The people themselves,” Miss Thomson said, "are still comparatively simple and unsophisticated. They are skilled workers and their beautiful fine embroidery. their buttons and bangles of olive wood, their hats and soft well-fitting shoes, arc eagerly sought after by tourists. They also manufacture a crudely-painted crockery that possesses a certain attraction. On special feastdays of the Church they array themselves in their full national costume, which is a particularly picturesque one, and decorate the churches with masses of flowers, or hold floral processions, much as they do in Italy.” The beautiful valley of Valldemosa, where George Sand took refuge with Chopin, and an ancient Spanish palace where the King and Queen of Spain had stayed just before their abdication, were also visited by Miss Thomson during her stay on the island. The palace, she added, though richly hung with tapestry and huge paintings, was very gloomy and intensely cold. Margaret Kennedy, author of “The Constant Nymph” and “Escape Me Never,” spends much of her time in Majorca writing. While she is there she has a room in a Spanish -house and lives almost entirely among the Spaniards, bolding little intercourse with the English residents.