Vittorio Matteo Corcos | Genre painter

A Reassessment of Corcos, Sensuality and Subtlety Intact

- The New York Times, article by Roderick Conway Morris A Reassessment of Corcos, Sensuality and Subtlety Intact, Oct. 7, 2014

The Jewish community of the Tuscan seaport of Livorno produced two notable artists whose lives spanned the 19th and 20th centuries: Vittorio Corcos and Amedeo Modigliani.

Corcos enjoyed a long and prosperous international career, dying at the age of 74 in 1933. Modigliani🎨 struggled to sell his work and died little known at the age of 35 in 1920.

But whereas Modigliani🎨 is now one of the most famous of 20th-century artists, Corcos, outside of Italy at least, is virtually forgotten. One reason is that Corcos’s uninspiringly conventional society and royal portraits have obscured the fact that he also produced some genuinely idiosyncratic images.

Vittorio Matteo Corcos | An Elegant Lady in a Pink Hat and Dress, 1888

Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859-1933) was an Italian painter, known for his portraits.

Many of his genre works depict winsome and finely dressed young men and women, in moments of repose and recreation.

He was born to Jewish parents, in Livorno. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence under Enrico Pollastrini.

Between 1878-1879 he worked under Domenico Morelli in Naples.

Giovanni Battista Lombardi | Ruth, 1864

Commissioned in 1859 by contessa Marietta Mazuchelli Longo, Lombardi's Ruth was the first of the artist's Old Testament subjects; a series which also included his Rebecca, Deborah, Susanna and Sulamite.

Lombardi's reputation had been built on his sensitive and innovative memorial sculpture, which he produced with his brother Giovita, in the studio in Rome which they set up in 1852.

The contessa Longo was a long-time supporter of Lombardi and indeed had previously commissioned a funerary monument to her deceased husband from the artist.

Olga Boznanska | Hands detail

Olga Boznańska (1865-1940) was a Polish painter, active in Munich and Paris.

Stylistically associated with the French impressionism, Boznańska received the French Legion of Honour in 1912, the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature in 1936, the Grand Prix at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques la Vie Moderne in 1937, and the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1938.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Boznańska see:

• Olga Boznanska | Impressionist painter

Adolph von Menzel | Drawing

Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815-1905) was a German🎨 Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings and paintings.

Along with Caspar David Friedrich🎨, he is considered one of the two most prominent German painters🎨 of the 19th century, and was the most successful artist of his era in Germany.

First known as Adolph Menzel, he was knighted in 1898 and changed his name to Adolph von Menzel🎨.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by von Menzel see:

• Adolph von Menzel | Realist painter🎨