Stopping horses

The Livorno born Fattori is now regarded as the outstanding Italian etcher of the later nineteenth century. His most significant artistic training was in Florence with Giuseppe Bezzuoli, and at the Accademia di Belle Arti. During Fattori's time in Florence, he frequented the Caffè Michelangiolo, where he met and became friends with a group of artists and writers with nationalist aspirations. His early pictures were landscapes and history paintings. Fattori indirectly imbibed the influence of Ingres through Enrico Pollastrini, another painter from Livorno. He thus learnt the importance of secure draughtsmanship and of simplicity in devising compositions. In 1859, the fervent Italian nationalist Giovanni Costa (1826-1903), a close friend of Frederick Leighton, and leader of the 'Etruscan School' of landscape painting in England, visited Fattori's studio, and encouraged him to enter a competition that year for a picture of a patriotic battle scene, which was organised by the Italian government, which was then based in Florence. Fattori's design for the 'Italian camp during the Battle of Magenta' earned him a commission for a painting of the subject, which was completed in 1860-61 (Palazzo Pitti, Florence). Preparatory work on this led him to travel to the sites of the battlefields in Northern Italy. A series of commissions for other Risorgimento battle scenes followed over the next 20 years, but the bulk of Fattori's work was devoted to landscapes and episodes of rural life, studied directly from nature. In the early 1860s, he painted alongside Giovanni Costa in the countryside around Livorno. Fattori's preference for elongated compositions derived from the paintings of his older friend. He painted a series of landscapes on small panels, often taken from cigar-box tops. Fattori retained the simplicity of the compositions of these pictures, when he came to paint larger works. In 1867, the critic, Diego Martelli, invited him to stay on his remote estate at Castiglioncello in the Maremma, close to the sea in south western Tuscany. The landscape, inhabitants, and animals of this low lying wooded district were to provide Fattori with fruitful motifs for his drawings and paintings for the rest of his career. In 1882, as the guest of Prince Corsini, he visited Maremma grossetana, the southern Maremma, which provided further subjects for his art. Fattori travelled to Rome in 1872 to make studies for his 'Horse Market at Terracina', and to Paris in 1875, where he exhibited as Costa's pupil at the Salon. He visited the Louvre, met many French artists, and studied the work of painters of the Barbizon school. However, although his friend and patron, Martelli, was an admirer of the Impressionists, Fattori's style was unaffected by his encounter with the art of his French contemporaries. His paintings were notable for their skilfully devised compositions of contrasted areas of bold and luminous colour. Fattori found it difficult to sell his paintings, and he gave private tuition to artists to earn a living. Scholars have interpreted the work of the last 30 years of his life as showing a harsher tone of realism, and as reflecting his financial disappointments and his disillusionment with political events. In December 1888, Fattori was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Accademia in Florence and Professor of Figure Study at the School of Architecture. He supplemented his income by teaching privately, when his salary was reduced. Fattori was highly respected as a teacher, and his influence on painters and printmakers extended well into the twentieth century. Fatttori made some 200 etchings, though their dating is very uncertain, as there are few points of reference. Only two of his prints, both from the very end of his career, bear dates. We do not know who taught Fattori to etch or when he started to make prints, but it is generally assumed that he was encouraged to take up etching seriously, when, in 1883, he received the commission from the council of the Promotrice Fiorentina to engrave his 1862 battle picture, 'The Cavalry Charge at the Battle of Montebello'. As commissions to produce copies after paintings exhibited in the society's exhibitions were generally given to professional printmakers, rather than to the painter himself, it has been argued that at this date Fattori must already have displayed some accomplishment as an etcher. A portfolio of Fattori's lithographs, '20 ricordi del vero', was published in 1884, but he seems to have abandoned lithography after the mid 1880s. Twenty -one of his etchings were acquired by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, after their exhibition at the Esposizione Nazionale in Bologna in 1888. Fattori's style and subject matter remained very consistent in the latter part of his career, making the dating of his prints even more uncertain. The compositions of many of his etchings can be related to those of his paintings, sometimes to works he produced many years before, but there is also evidence that he occasionally developed pictures from his prints. His plates are mostly in the Uffizi, which published restrikes in 1925 (Text from Martin Hopkinson, 'Italian Prints 1875-1975', BMP, 2007)