Achille Vertunni (1826 – 1897), Fishermen at dawn

Achille Vertunni (1826 – 1897)

Fishermen at dawn

Oil on canvas applied on masonite, 110 x 61 cm

With frame, 132 x 85 cm

Signed lower left: A. Vertunni Roma

This work is signed by the Neapolitan artist Achille Vertunni (1826-1897), an important exponent of nineteenth-century realism. Coming from a wealthy family in the city of Naples, he decided to undertake a career as an artist going against the wishes of his parents who wanted him to be an architect; he attended the Real Accademia and later landed at the school of Giuseppe Bonolis, his future teacher, 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, arriving at participating in the revolutionary movements that broke out in Naples in 1848. Anti-academism, together with the general rejection of neoclassical formalism, were the first indicators that traced his maturity, resulting in subjects linked to the romantic tradition first and in paintings with the landscape increasingly as a protagonist later. Among the highest points we can mention the 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 its lagoon and up to the countryside around Rome, the city where he moved in 1853. Here he founded his own atelier and committed himself to setting up in his home, a studio equipped with a real collection of objects, furniture and works from every era, much appreciated by the clients, customers and colleagues who were lucky enough to visit it. His fame reached international dimensions, meeting the appreciation of the Italian and European upper middle class especially for the subjects of a veristic nature where the landscape dominates the human figure without supplanting it completely but, on the contrary, integrating it and obtaining its valorization and measure. Even in this case the two fishermen, caught against the light during a changing sunset, do not appear to be a simple background: the layout of the scene both from a symmetry and a thematic point of view, seems to require the boat that moors to one of the poles. In addition to the thematic issues, the technical ones should be appreciated, especially in the layered rendering of the different shades that start from the bright reflections of the waves to the darker trails of clouds in the center of the sky. The streaking of the brush strokes gives three-dimensionality and makes the aquatic element vibrant and lively, while in the upper part the different parts of the celestial vault appear divided but interpenetrated at the same time.