Towards the Hill Town

Clotilde (Cloclo) Peploe was born in 1915. She was the daughter of Christopher Brewster, an American born in Austria and Elizabeth von Hildebrandt, a daughter of an Austrian sculptor who has acquired a former monastery called San Francesco in Florence as family home and studio. Elizabeth was also a painter and she and her daughter travelled extensively for work and inspiration in Italy in the thirties. During the 1930’s Clotilde and her mother spent long months painting together in southern Italy, and later in Corfu and on mainland Greece. At the same time she became romantically attached to Willy Peploe, son of the Scottish artist, S.J. Peploe, whom she married in Athens in November 1939. Her typical subject is the arid, mineral landscape of Calabria and the Greek islands, complex, ancient landscapes at once fertile and hostile. The film Grandmother’s Footsteps is a charming and beautiful bio-pic and meditation on the calling of the artist made in recent years by Lola Peploe