Achille Vertunni (1826 - 1897), Fishermen at Dawn

Achille Vertunni (1826 - 1897) Fishermen at dawn Oil on canvas applied to masonite, 110 x 61 cm With frame, 132 x 85 cm Signed lower left: A. Vertunni Rome This work is signed by the Neapolitan artist Achille Vertunni (1826-1897), an important exponent of 19th-century realism. Coming from a well-to-do family in the city of Naples, he decided to pursue a career as an artist against the wishes of his parents who wanted him to be an architect; he attended the Royal Academy and later joined the school of Giuseppe Bonolis, his future master, from whom he learned the realist lesson and in whose school he managed to find young colleagues with whom to share both artistic and political experiences, eventually participating in the revolutionary uprisings that broke out in Naples in 1848. Anti-academicism, together with the general rejection of neoclassical formalism, were the first indicators that marked his maturity, which resulted in subjects linked to the romantic tradition first and in paintings with the landscape increasingly the protagonist later. Among the highest points, we can mention Pia de' Tolomei and Dante in the forest, a work still linked to historical landscape painting, while the views of cities, villages or glimpses of nature range from his Campania, passing through Venice and the villages of the relative lagoon and up to the countryside around Rome, the city to which he moved in 1853. Here he founded his own atelier and was committed to setting up in his home, a studio equipped with a real collection of objects, furniture and works of all ages, much appreciated by clients, customers and colleagues who were fortunate enough to visit it. His fame reached international dimensions, meeting the appreciation of the Italian and European upper middle class especially for veristic subjects where the landscape dominates the human figure without completely supplanting it but, on the contrary, integrating it and obtaining its valorization and measurement. Also in this case, the two fishermen, caught in backlight during a changing sunset, do not appear to be simple contour: the composition of the scene both from a point of view of symmetries and from a thematic point of view, seems to require the boat that docks to one of the poles. In addition to the thematic issues, the technical ones should be appreciated, especially in the stratified rendering of the different tones that start from the bright reflections of the waves up to the darker streaks of clouds in the center of the sky. The streak of brushstrokes gives three-dimensionality and makes the aquatic element vibratile and lively, while in the upper part the different parts of the celestial vault appear divided but penetrated at the same time.