Alessandro La Volpe (c. 1820-1887)

Alessandro La Volpe (c. 1820-1887)

"View of Capri, Bay of Naples"

Oil on canvas

Signed and dated lower right

29.5 x 62.5 cm

Restorations

A variant of our painting, dating from 1889, is preserved at the O'Higginiano Museum of Fine Arts in Talca (inv. n° 1148).

Alessandro La Volpe was a 19th-century Italian landscape painter, specializing in Italian landscapes and monuments. He excelled at capturing the vivid light and arid climate of his native Italy. Born in Lucera in 1819, he was the son of an employee of the Royal College. After completing his studies, La Volpe moved to Naples and joined the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied with Salvatore Fergola (1799-1874), official painter to the French monarchy in Naples. La Volpe began exhibiting in Naples in 1848. In 1850, he was sent to Sicily and Egypt on an official mission for the Prince of Lichtenberg to survey important monuments, a mission that recognized his attention to detail and his talent as an accomplished painter. On his return to Italy, he settled in Florence, where he helped found the Scuola di Staggia, a school of Romantic landscape painters. Painting en plein air in the 1850s and 1860s, his work was characterized by a predilection for depicting identifiable, generally picturesque locations in the Tuscan countryside, emphasizing specific details and aspects of everyday life. The Scuola di Staggia is remarkable for being one of the first examples in Tuscany of a group of artists painting together from life, a practice that strongly influenced the Macchiaioli circle and brought Tuscan artists closer to their Parisian and American contemporaries of the mid-twentieth century.