Pietro Fabris

PIETRO FABRIS (documented in Naples from 1756 to 1792).
"Popular scene", ca. 1770.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Certificate.
Measurements: 116 x 94 cm; 152 x 126 cm (frame).

With this magnificent popular scene Pietro Fabris follows in the wake of the "Bamboccianti", genre painters active in Rome from about 1625 to the end of the 17th century who created small cabinet paintings or engravings of the daily life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside. These artists, mostly Dutch and Flemish, brought with them to Italy the existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from 16th-century Netherlandish art. Despite their humble subject matter, the works found appreciation among elite collectors and fetched high prices. As Stefano Causa, an expert on the artist, states about the work under bidding "This dazzling popular scene, which takes place en plein air in the shadow of a ruined arch at the entrance of an unidentified village, constitutes a precious piece to better map the chapter of "Neapolitan" Vedutism of the second half of the 18th century." Causa continues that the work we now present can be cataloged as a mature work made in the best moment of the Anglo-Napolitan painter, comparable to important works of his production as the pair of canvases with scenes of popular life, set in a grotto of Posillipo and selling watermelons in the port, already on the English market and that, signed and dated 1656 and '57 are the oldest trace of the painter's Neapolitan work). He also states that it can be compared to "Tarantella on the background of the Bay of Naples", a piece that comes from the collection of Maurizio and Isabella Alisio and is currently preserved in the collections of the Museum of San Martino. Causa defines the work as a fresh and vivid scene realized by a very clear palette, bathed by the light of a southern afternoon. The multiple characters divided into various planes accentuate the popular character of the scene: "from the young woman with a promising cleavage holding a spinning wheel, to the young men in caps, one of them barefoot, engaged in a game of blackberry on a barrel (on which, represented with a few brushstrokes, is the cat). Further to the right, two small dogs, one of them wearing a collar, stand apart, directing our attention to the center of the page where, in the background, a man and a woman riding a mule are drinking. Two chattering children, one of whom shields himself with a tambourine, deftly introduce the opposite corner of the painting, full of annotations where, with the mother on her back nursing her child, they are accompanied by peasants and animals (depicted with an accuracy of contours not unworthy of the best Jacob Phillip Hackert)," concludes Causa.

Despite being an artist of whom we know little biographical information, we know that he was an Italian painter active in England and Naples in the second half of the 18th century. He produced for Sir William Hamilton, diplomat and amateur geologist, a series of engravings based on his paintings depicting contemporary volcanic activity compiled in two books, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, &c. (London, 1774) and Campi Phlegraei: Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies (Naples, 1776). Under Hamilton's patronage, he also made visual reproductions on his excursions to visit the volcanic sites of Mount Etna, Mount Vesuvius, and the Lipari Islands. His paintings and drawings were exhibited in 1768 at the Free Society of London and in 1772 at the Society of Artists of Great Britain in London.