Life in the country has its idyllic moments: a worker lying in the sun and flowers, a meal with violin music, country dancing, and courting, even among the cows.
Segantini
Pontoise by Pissarro, Paul Nash’s Berkshire Downs, Rosa Bonheur’s teams of oxen ploughing, and Grant Wood’s Iowa prairie.
Mountain people painted in the late 19th century: Hutsuls by Axentowicz and others, and those of the Engadine by the stateless Segantini.
Paintings of alpine meadows, often used as summer grazing in the transhumance. Men from the lower valleys took their livestock up to the plateau to graze for the summer.
From 1880, Naturalism showed rural deprivation, but active farmyards with plenty of livestock. Then in the 20th century came the tractor.
Recognised as the first Italian Symbolist, he was introduced to Divisionism by a patron and art critic. Magnificent paintings.
More superb paintings from the end of the nineteenth century, including the amazing Martin’s unique merger of Symbolism and Divisionism.
Early in 1896, several artists who exhibited at the Salons set up a rival exhibition. The following year was the last of Péladan’s and his movements petered out by the twentieth century.
More favourite articles from 2019, from ‘Dante’s Divine Comedy’ as painted by William Blake, through Vincent van Gogh, to Renoir’s landscapes.
In the first article about the Symbolist painting of Giovanni Segantini (1858–1899), I showed a selection of his […]
The Eclectic Light Company 