Giuseppe De Nittis | Veduta di Londra (The Victoria Embankment, London), 1875

The extended trips made by the artist to London (1875-1881) coincided with one of the happiest and most productive of his short life.

It was in London that De Nittis befriended artists such as Tissot, Millais, Leighton, Watts and Alma Tadema.

While in London he stayed with one of his patrons, the banker Kaye Knowles.

It was not just the physical aspects of these cityscapes that proved to be difficult to fully master, but London's distinctive light and atmosphere was a principal challenge for the artist.

Giuseppe De Nittis | Veduta di Londra (The Victoria Embankment, London), 1875 | Christie's

Giuseppe De Nittis | Impressionist painter

Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) - printmaker, painter / draughtsman.

Born in Barletta in Apulia, De Nittis received his first artistic training from Giambattista Calò, a local painter, before moving to Naples in 1861 to attend the Istituto di Belle Arti.

He was expelled in 1863 for failing to conform to academic practice.

At that time, De Nittis' main interest was in experimenting with plein air painting.

Il Verismo, la pittura degli umili

Filippo Palizzi (Italian, 1818-1899) | Girl on the rock in Sorrento, 1871

The "Verismo" (meaning "realism", from Italian vero, meaning "true") refers to a 19th-century Italian painting🎨 style. This style was practiced most characteristically by the Macchiaioli group of painters🎨, who were forerunners of the French Impressionists.

The link pin between European verismo in painting and the States could be considered to be the work of John Singer Sargent🎨, in regard to technique, but not in comments on the working classes.

Alceste Campriani (1848-1933) Genre painter

Alceste Campriani was an Italian painter🎨 noted for his landscapes, especially of the Neapolitan countryside.

He was born in Terni from a noble family. His father's political attachment to the cause of Italy prompted his arrest by Papal officers.

This led to economic difficulties for the Campriani family. He was enrolled in the Naples Institute of Fine arts, but he proved recalcitrant to academic discipline, and abandoned the institute to paint on his own.

Giuseppe De Nittis | La Belle Epoque

Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) was one of the most important Italian painters of the 19th century, whose work merges the styles of Salon art and Impressionism.

De Nittis exhibited twelve paintings in the Exposition Universelle of 1878, and was awarded a gold medal.

In that same year he received the Légion d’honneur.

Antonino Leto | Genre painter

Antonino or Antonio Leto (1844 in Monreale, Sicily - 1913 in Capri, Italy) was an Italian painter, painting mainly genre / landscape subjects in an impressionistic style.

In 1861, sponsored by his uncle, he moved to study in Palermo under L. Barba and Luigi Lojacono.

He adopted the style and subject matter of Filippo Palizzi.

In 1864, he moved to Naples where he was attracted to the Scuola of Resina style of painting fostered by Giuseppe De Nittis. He took lessons from Adriano Cecioni. He painted both in oil, tempera, and watercolor.

Giuseppe De Nittis | Vita ed opere

De Nittis Giuseppe (1846-1884) - Nacque a Barletta (Bari) il 25 febbr. 1846, da Raffaele e da Teresa Buracchia. Visse gli anni della sua prima giovinezza nella città natale con i fratelli, dopo la morte di entrambi i genitori.

Compiuti i primi studi con G. B. Calò e con V. Dattoli, iniziò a dipingere trovando ispirazione nella natura, con quell'istintiva gioia e dedizione che saranno le doti primarie del suo operare.

Quindicenne, entrò all'istituto delle belle arti di Napoli, dove studiò sotto la guida di G. Smargiassi e di G. Mancinelli.

Georges Jeanniot | Belle Époque painter

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (1848-1934) was a Swiss-French Impressionist painter, designer, watercolorist, and engraver who was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in France.

His work often depicts the modern life in Paris.

The artistic education of Pierre-Georges Jeanniot began with his father, Pierre-Alexandre Jeanniot (1826–1892), a longtime director of l'École des Beaux-Arts of Dijon, France.

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot started out pursuing a military career, as an infantry officer (1866-1881).

Francesco Paolo Michetti | Genre painter

Francesco Paolo Michetti (1851-1929) was an Italian painter known especially for his genre works.

He was born in Tocco da Casauria in the Province of Chieti. His father having died when he was a boy, Michetti was forced to work with a local artisan.

In 1868, Michetti was awarded a stipend by the province to study at the Accademia (now Istituto) in Naples under Domenico Morelli.

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.

Macchiaioli Art History and Sitemap

The Macchiaioli were a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, did much of their painting outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade and color.

This practice relates the Macchiaioli to the French Impressionists who came to prominence a few years later, although the Macchiaioli pursued somewhat different purposes.

Federico Zandomeneghi - Il giubbetto rosso, 1895

Giovanni Boldini | La Belle Epoque

From: The British Museum

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Born in Ferrara, the son of the painter Antonio Boldini (1792-1872), from whom he received his first artistic training, Giovanni Boldini studied at the Civico Ateneo di Palazzo dei Diamanti in his native city, where he had established a reputation as an accomplished portrait painter by the time he was 18.

In 1862 he went to Florence, where he met artists in the Macchiaioli circle at the Caffé Michelangiolo, while attending the Scuola del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti.

Michele Gordigiani (1830-1909), the leading portrait painter in Tuscany, passed on some of his commissions to Boldini.

Boldini saw and admired the paintings of Courbet and Manet at the Exposition Universelle in 1867 on a visit to Paris, where he met Degas, who became a lifelong friend.

Giovanni Boldini | Treccia bionda / Blonde Braid, 1891

Giovanni Boldini | Blond Braid, 1891

Based on its messy and impulsive pictorial style, "Treccia bionda" is generally dated to the beginning of the 1890s, by which point Giovanni Boldini (1842 -1931) had already moved to Paris.

In addition to serving as an example of Impressionist painting from that time, the faintness of the strokes showcases an in-depth knowledge of Frans Hals' chiaroscuro technique; it seems that Boldini may have become close with him during a trip to Amsterdam in 1876.

Unlike many of the artist's female portraits, in which the entire figure functions as a means of showcasing all the details of the protagonists' elegant and elaborate dresses, this painting limits the appearance of the figure to the bust.

Giovanni Boldini | Treccia bionda, 1891 (detail) | GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Milano

Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta | Genre painter

Biography from: Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga

Born in Rome on 24 July 1841 and christened at the church of San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (24 July 1841 - 15 September 1920) was a pupil of his father Federico and his grandfather José de Madrazo.

He also studied at the San Fernando Academy under Carlos Luis Ribera and Carlos de Haes, among others.

In 1862 he took up residence in Paris, where he was a pupil of the painter Léon Coignet.

Ernest Ange Duez | Genre painter

Ernest Ange Duez - also known as Ernest-Ange Duez and Ernest Duez, (8 March 1843 - 5 April 1896) was a French painter of genre scenes, portraits, landscapes and religious subjects.

Although he was an admirer of Édouard Manet and owned paintings by Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot, his palette was more subdued than that of most of the Impressionists, and his technique more controlled.

His style, between that of the conservative Paris Salon and Impressionism, has been called juste milieu, and he has been compared to Alfred Stevens, Giuseppe De Nittis and James Tissot.

Italian Art History and Sitemap

Italian art has influenced several major movements throughout the centuries and has produced several great artists, including painters, architects and sculptors.

Today, Italy has an important place in the international art scene, with several major art galleries, museums and exhibitions; major artistic centres in the country include Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Turin, Genoa, Naples, Palermo, Lecce and other cities.

Italy is home to 53 World Heritage Sites, the largest number of any country in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci | La Gioconda (1503-1505) Musée-du-Louvre

Telemaco Signorini | Macchiaioli Art Movement

Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901) was an Italian artist who belonged to the group known as the Macchiaioli.

He was born in the Santa Croce quarter of Florence, and showed an early inclination toward the study of literature, but with the encouragement of his father, Giovanni Signorini, a court painter for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he decided instead to study painting.

In 1852 he enrolled at the Florentine Academy, and by 1854 he was painting landscapes En Plein air.

The following year he exhibited for the first time, showing paintings inspired by the works of Walter Scott and Machiavelli at the Florentine Promotrice.

Gustave Caillebotte | Impressionist painter

Gustave Caillebotte, (born August 19, 1848, Paris, France - died February 21, 1894, Gennevilliers), French painter, art collector, and impresario who combined aspects of the academic and Impressionist styles in a unique synthesis.

Born into a wealthy family, Caillebotte trained to be an engineer but became interested in painting and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He met Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet in 1874 and showed his works at the Impressionist exhibition of 1876 and its successors.

19th century Art | Sitemap

From Realism to early Modernism, the 19th century gave birth to a variety of artistic movements.

The Realism and Romanticism of the early 19th century gave way to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in the later half of the century, with Paris being the dominant art capital of the world. In the United States the Hudson River School was prominent.

Camille Claudel, Debussy and La Valse, 1891

Jean-Léon Gérôme | Academic / Orientalist painter

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism.

The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax.

He is considered one of the most important painters from this Academic period, and in addition to being a painter, he was also a teacher with a long list of students.