DAUGHTER OF ITALIAN NOBILITY CONTINUES TO CAPTIVATE AND ENRICH US WITH HER ENIGMATIC LIFE AND ARTISTIC LEGACY

By Lynn Dewing

Imagine the stares from onlookers at the Vernon train station one hot summer day in 1921 as the three-member Italian Caetani family disembarked with a cook, valet, secretary and 30 pieces of luggage. Six-foot-five Leone Caetani, the father, was middle-aged, with a very commanding presence. Delicate Ofelia Fabiani, 25, and their four-year-old daughter, Sveva, would have been dressed in the latest Parisian styles.

The true reason Leone moved his daughter and her mother from Italy to Vernon would prove to be a long-time mystery that kept locals intrigued for decades. He was first heir to one of the most prominent Italian families, Duke of Sermoneta and Prince of Teano, and had in his ancestry popes in the 10th and 13th centuries and prominent scientists, scholars, statesmen, writers and artists. He was fluent in 11 languages, a world traveler, a veteran of World War I and an Oriental scholar responsible for a definitive set of books about Islam. He had also been a member of parliament for a riding in Rome, during which he did the unexpected and became a reformer with the Radical Socialist Party.

Was it Leone’s political leanings that precipitated the move? He considered the up-and-coming fascism in his country to be unpalatable, if not dangerous. Or perhaps he had come to Vernon because he had lost much of the family land through unfortunate investments.

Another reason for the Caetani move emerged in recent years. Leone’s new daughter would never have been able to bear his name in Italy because she was illegitimate —
his Catholic wife had refused him a divorce when he got involved with Ofelia.

Leone happily purchased a house on Pleasant Valley Road on property with an orchard and a wood lot. Ofelia, however, was not so happy. She chose not to learn English, which made it impossible for her to have friends, and would stay home accompanied by her long-time companion listening to opera with her long-time companion from Europe, Miss Juul. Sveva gladly donned overalls and helped her father pick fruit and haul wood.

Leone struck a compromise with his little family that involved traveling in Europe up to a year at a time. Ofelia visited London and Paris fashion houses and Sveva studied with English governesses. They attended dance and opera performances, and went to galleries and casinos. Leone enrolled Sveva in a Paris art academy and later hired a well-known artist, Andre Petroff, to give her private drawing and painting lessons. She developed artistic self-discipline and enthusiasm for art that never left her.

Losses in the stock market crash changed the Caetani lifestyle. Leone, now a Canadian citizen, embraced the peacefulness of a slower life at home. Sveva was sent to Crofton House, a Vancouver private school, where she excelled in academics, sports, drama and art, and was allowed to make friends for the first time.

Then, Leone became ill. Life in the household changed forever when he died in 1935. At first Sveva was allowed to paint, resulting in a group of vignettes with strong religious content and titles such as ‘Virgin Mary at the Cross’. Ofelia soon felt threatened by her daughter’s art, however, and finally banned her from drawing and painting.

“In order to have peace I gave it up for 15 years; it was like death,” Sveva would recall later.

Her increasingly frail and deluded mother insisted her daughter clean house, nurse her day and night, and restricted her time with the outside world. Sveva complied because she loved Ofelia and was apparently willing to sacrifice personal happiness.

“Ofelia was a staunch Catholic. In the Catholic faith, adultery is a mortal sin,” speculates actress Christine Pilgrim, who plays Miss Juul, Ofelia’s companion, while guiding the public through the Caetani estate on summer tours. “Hence her looking after Sveva with the eye of an eagle. She also would not have wanted her to suffer the same fate as herself; so she tried to protect her from any kind of liaison.”

“Apparently Ofelia was psychic,” says Jim Elderton, who has made a standing-room-only film about Sveva’s life. “A glass decanter exploded when Sveva was at a friend’s house once and she said, ‘That’s Mother. She’s objecting to me having a good time.”

Steve Lattey grew up near Pleasant Valley Road where the Caetanis lived. He played with friends in woods surrounding the big, dark street. “We thought they were witches,” he said. “It was scary. The gate was always closed and the mother never went outside. Sveva was a strange, tall, lean pale, otherworldly-looking person very different from anyone else.”

The forced isolation was crushing to her soul and the experience dominated her later artistic inspiration.

Ofelia died in 1960, and the gates sprung open; Sveva was already middle-aged. She had been left out of Ofelia’s will and had to earn an income. The people of Vernon were very generous in helping her re-enter society. She was offered a teaching job at St. James Catholic School; the phenomenal scope of her reading, combined with her artistic training and knowledge of languages, made it a natural direction.

With the help of friends, Sveva obtained a teaching position at Charles Bloom Secondary in Lumby and taught there for 11 years.

“She made it easy to learn and talked about being royalty,” recalls Haille Stark, who studied French with her.

Art student Anne Kneale loved Sveva and passed along what she learned from her teachers to her own daughters. Other faculty remember her as having a dramatic flair and an unconventional teaching style.

Recapitulating a life through art.

Sveva conceived a grand plan in 1975 for a series of paintings about her life, modeled upon Dante’s Divine Comedy. This work became her central focus, one that took three years to plan and 14 years to complete. She would rise early in the morning to paint before going to her full-time teaching job and then come home and create late into the night. Each painting took approximately three months to complete.

“The image comes to me first, virtually complete in its composition, mood and colour,” explained Sveva about her artistic process, “and without warning…a painting virtually demands of me its realization.”

During this period, a local photographer and painter, Heidi Thompson, sought out Sveva. She had first heard her speak on art, humanity and history while in high school.

“I was warned that she didn’t like to see people, but I took a chance. A 6’2” woman came and peered on the balcony and bellowed ‘what do you want?’ ‘I just want to see your paintings,’ I replied. ‘What do you do?’ she asked ‘I’m a photographer,’ I said.

Sveva was a quarter of the way through her series and contemplating having them documented so she made a proposal. “She hired me that day and referred to me for the next ten years as ‘my photographer’ as if she owned me but I took honour in that.”

Not only was Heidi summoned whenever a painting was completed or an event happening, but Sveva became her mentor as a painter. “She took that role very seriously,” said Heidi. “She could see what you could become — the inner potential — and she spoke to that.”

The self-imposed painting regimen took its toll and ill health forced Sveva to retire from teaching in 1983. Two years later, friend and fellow artist Joan Heriot moved into the house with her as assistant and companion.

Sveva completed the 56th and last painting in the Recapitulation series in 1989. The Alberta Foundation for the Arts in Edmonton agreed to provide them a home and pay framing costs.

In 1993, Heidi proposed publishing her work as a book. A design was agreed upon and a contract half finished when
Sveva died.

End of a life, beginning of a legend.

Shocked and saddened, Heidi decided to go ahead with the project and released Caetani:Recapitulation in 1995. It is presently represented by a dozen distributors around the world and can be ordered through any bookstore.

Numerous articles have been written about Sveva including some by the London Times, London Daily Telegraph and Quest. Okanagan College has published an English as a Second Language text entitled Okanagan History Vignettes with a story about Sveva. At the University of Victoria, two art professors, Bill Zuk, Ph.D. and Robert Dalton, Ph.D. wrote articles for the BC Teacher’s Journal about using Caetani paintings in the classroom.

In 2004, Heidi was invited with three academics to give a presentation in Rome about Sveva’s life and art. She was gratified to find some interest in Italy for her work, considering that to Italian aristocracy, Sveva did not exist because of her illegitimacy.

Heidi believes people must know about Sveva’s life in order to appreciate her art. Sveva “used art to transform her negative personal life into something unique and great,” she says. She has been working several years on a feature film script of her own exploring the psychological forces governing Sveva’s life.

In summer, 2005, the Vernon Public Art Gallery presented “Rumours of a House,” a dramatized tour of the grounds of the Caetani estate. The turnout was phenomenal.

The new documentary film, “Sveva, Prisoner of Vernon,” made by Jim Elderton, has been shown four times since November 2005 at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre, all to sold-out crowds. In fact, it has broken the record for most attendees at the venue for a single show. The next screening is October 22, 2006.

Jim continues to amass new stories about Sveva as people approach him on the street to share their experiences. He admits her life is a filmmaker’s dream. But he is worried that her artistic reputation will languish locally if his film doesn’t reach the wider audience it deserves due to unsettled issues with Heidi Thompson pertaining to copyright.

“Sveva could be considered along with the Group of Seven, but she is virtually unknown outside Vernon,” says Peter Blundell, an Okanagan art appraiser.

According to art educator Sharon McCoubrey of U.B.C. Okanagan, Sveva Caetani is “becoming acknowledged as a significant figure in Canadian art.” But general curiosity is still not so much about her art, it seems, as her life.

Whether she emerges onto the world stage through Jim’s documentary, art exhibitions or books, it will happen. Those of us who live in the Okanagan will feel privileged to have known her first.

Look for more arts and culture in the July/August issue of Okanagan Life - on newstands now!