Alfonso Hollaender, Houses In A Tuscan Village With Figures, Signed

Alfonso Hollaender, Houses in a Tuscan Village with Figures, Signed

Alfonso Hollaender (Regensburg, 1845 – Florence, 1923)
Oil on small wood panel.
Dim. Without frame cm 14x19

Signed lower left: A. Hollaender.
Old inscription on the reverse: “A. Hollaender – Cortile con figure” (“Courtyard with Figures”).

Alfonso Hollaender belongs to that generation of foreign artists who settled in Florence and became fully integrated into Tuscan artistic culture. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, he moved to Florence in 1870, entering the artistic milieu that had developed around the Macchiaioli. He shared with them, in particular, an interest in painting directly from life, small formats, and subjects drawn from the Tuscan countryside and everyday life.

This small panel is a particularly representative example. Stone houses with old external staircases create an irregular courtyard animated by women and children engaged in everyday activities. Rapid brushwork, figures defined with just a few touches, and variations of light across the masonry preserve the immediacy of a study painted on the spot.

Hollaender painted landscapes and seascapes, village scenes and views of the Tuscan countryside, as well as church interiors and small figure studies. German by birth and Florentine by adoption, he occupies a distinctive position within Tuscan painting of the second half of the nineteenth century, closely connected with the artistic experience of the Macchiaioli.

Provenance: an old Florentine collection formed by an important collector of Tuscan painting, with a particular interest in Alfonso Hollaender and the Macchiaioli. Several works by Hollaender from the same collection bear inscriptions in a similar hand and numbers apparently corresponding to an old collection inventory, now untraced.
This painting also retains its historic title, “Cortile con figure” (“Courtyard with Figures”).