page_title: Giovanni Fattori
section_title: Paintings in the middle period (1861–1883)
hierarchical_section_title: Giovanni Fattori / Biography / Paintings in the middle period (1861–1883)
context_page_description: Giovanni Fattori was an Italian artist, one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli. He was initially a painter of historical themes and military subjects. In his middle years, inspired by the Barbizon school, he became one of the leading Italian plein-airists, painting landscapes, rural scenes, and scenes of military life. After 1884, he devoted much energy to etching.
context_section_description: Fattori's mature works represent a synthesis between the natural light of painting en plein air—painting with vivid but composed spots (macchia)—and the traditional method of composing large paintings in the studio, from sketches.
  During the period 1861–67 he stayed mainly at Livorno, to nurse his wife who had contracted tuberculosis. During this period he painted peasantry, themes from rural life and also some portraits, such as La cugina Argia. In these works he demonstrated his mastery of macchia technique, natural light and shade with their contrasting areas of broad colour, showing the formative influence of Giovanni Costa. 
  In 1864 he submitted four more works to the Promotrice fiorentina.  In his landscape painting La Rotonda di Palmieri (Palmieri's round terrace) (1866), geometrical simplicity and colour have become a structural part of the painting.
  Late in 1866 he moved to a new and larger studio in Florence, to accommodate his larger historical canvases, as he still received commissions for epic battle scenes from the Italian unification (Risorgimento). A famous painting from this period is the Storming of the Madonna della Scoperta, an episode of the Battle of San Martino (1859).
  Following the death of his wife in March 1867, he spent the summer of 1867 in Castiglioncello with the critic Diego Martelli, the theoretician of the Macchiaioli.  Working together with the painter Giuseppe Abbati on the same themes, he painted a number of landscapes en plein air and studies of rustic life and peasants working in market gardens. In these paintings he put particular emphasis on a bold design within a geometrical simplicity, and on an intense luminosity. One of his paintings from this period is Pause in the Maremma with Farmers and Ox-cart (1873–75).
  Fattori received an award at the Parma exhibition of 1870 for his battle scene Prince Amadeo Feritio at Custoza. On a trip to Rome in 1872 he made studies for Horse Market at Terracina (painting destroyed) for which he received a bronze medal at the World Exhibition of Vienna in 1873 and again at the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1876. The trip also provided material for Roman Carts (1872-1873).
  In 1875 Fattori, together with Francesco Gioli, Egisto Ferroni and Niccolò Cannicci,  visited Paris, where he was exhibiting his work Repose at the Salon. Via Diego Martelli, who was now living in Paris, he came into contact with many French artists, among them Camille Pissarro and the expatriate Federico Zandomeneghi. But he reacted unenthusiastically to Impressionist works, expressing his preference for the artists of the Barbizon school and his deep admiration for Édouard Manet and Corot.
  He started giving private painting lessons and, from 1869, he taught twice weekly at the Florentine Academy (where one of his late students was Amedeo Modigliani). However, he experienced financial difficulties, as his battle scenes found few purchasers. When he was unable to pay his taxes, his property in Florence was confiscated; this and a broken kneecap further depressed him. In 1878 he sent two paintings to the Exposition Universelle of Paris, but was too impoverished to attend. His disillusionment is revealed in the harsher realism of his works from the late 1870s.
  In the 1880s he painted mainly rural themes, such as horses and cattle. His visits to the estate of the Princes Corsini in Maremma in 1881 and 1882 culminated in a series of paintings of cowherds, some of which were exhibited at the Esposizione Nazionale in Venice in 1887.
caption: Pause in the Maremma with farmers and ox-cart, 1873–75
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