The artist’s initial artistic training was in Brescia, where he enrolled at the school of painting, arts and crafts connected with the Pinacoteca Tosi in the early 1870s. The award of a grant from the city council in 1875 enabled him to attend courses at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he won a number of prizes. His early work focused on historical subjects and portraits, where late echoes of the Scapigliatura movement can also be discerned in the sketchy handling of paint. It was in the 1880s that landscape, interpreted in accordance with the canons of Lombard Naturalism, came to predominate in his output. He formed friendships with Filippo Carcano and Eugenio Gignous, and went to paint in the Gignese area with the latter. A personal artistic vocabulary of short, brisk brushstrokes was developed and his palette gradually lightened to take on a diffuse radiance. In the mature phase of his career, from the late 1880s to 1895, Chioggia and Venice became his favourite settings for an extensive repertoire of seascapes.

Elena Lissoni