A pleasant discovery at the Petit Palais today: an exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe De Nittis, a contemporary of Manet and Degas, in whose artworks Jules Claretie found 'un accent de modernité élégante qu'on n'avait pas eu, avant lui, à un tel degré'.
Here is an extract from the exhibition notes:
"Peintre de la vie moderne, De Nittis s'intéresse à la vie des boulevards, des Tuileries et aux courses hippiques d’Auteuil ou de Longchamp, attentif à noter les toilettes et les modes de l'élégance parisienne. C'est un paysagiste sensible, aussi habile à traduire les contrastes lumineux de son pays natal que les ciels brumeux d'Ile de France, ou les brouillards londoniens."
But it is perhaps as a painter of women that I find De Nittis excels himself: a pale curve of neck, a bare shoulder in the lamplight, the languid gaze of Léontine, his young, doe-eyed wife… In these canvases, the exhibition notes explain, De Nittis 'fait entrer le spectateur dans l’intimité féminine et crée une forte sensation de mystère'.
In Effet de Neige / Effetto di Neve (pictured above), a young woman sits contemplating the Parisian snowscape around her. Goncourt thought the work an 'extraordinaire symphonie de la blancheur', but the blinding whiteness is merely a backdrop: it is the sombre profiles of the subjects that stand out. The dress and folded brolly of the lady are black – as are the silhouette of the two birds that flit through the middle of the canvas: their pairing emphasising her solitude, their flight her stillness.
In Rêverie (en écoutant le piano) / Pensierosa (ascoltando il pianoforte), we encounter another young woman, again in profile and dressed in black – this time in a dim, sumptuous interior with a pink lampshade on a shelf and a bouquet of flowers behind her. An air of solitude and melancholy pervades the piece, and the night that enfolds the scene mutes the delicate melody that holds her in its thrall, leaving us with a picture of a pensive stillness suffused with a myriad private thoughts.
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