Oil painting on canvas, 'Rocky Italian Landscape', Alessandro Castelli, second half of the 19th century

A rocky landscape in a warm sunlight with mountains receding into the distance, a river in the middle background, and tall trees in the foreground; very small figures of a hunter and his dogs can be seen half-hidden by the shade in the foreground and a lone figure walking on a path in the middle distance.

Bequeathed by Joshua Dixon

Bequeathed by Joshua Dixon, 1886
Ref: Parkinson, Ronald, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, (Victoria & Albert Museum, HMSO, London, 1990), p.xx.
Joshua Dixon (1811-1885), was the son of Abraham Dixon of Whitehaven and brother of George Dixon (who was head of the foreign merchants firm of Rabone Brothers in Birmingham 1883-98). Educated at Leeds Grammar School, and was deputy chairman of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company 1869-70. Died Winslade, near Exeter, 7 December 1885. Bequeathed all his collection of drawings, watercolours and oil paintings to the Bethnal Green Museum; they have since been transferred to the V&A. He also collected engravings, Japanese vases and panels, and bronze and marble sculpture.

Historical significance: This painting is a good example of Alessandro Castelli's landscape paintings, a category in which he specialised. It shows a rocky landscape skilfully receding into the distance. This almost panoramic view is composed of three plains, a technique that enhances the sense of depth and structures this wide-open view. The foreground is fully immersed in the shade and therefore contrasts with the middle background suffused with a warm pink sunlight while the background depicted in a very light palette seems to vanish into the distance.
This composition relies on the classical ideas developed in the art of such painters as Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain (1604-1682), who were highly regarded by the Academy at the time, but also bears some characteristics of the romantic period without being fully Romantic.
The disproportion between the hardly visible hunter with his two dogs almost disappearing into the shade in the foreground and the nearby tall pines, which appear as lone enigmatic figures, while another figure can be seen, walking onto a path in the middle distance betray the influence of Romanticism.
However Castelli subtly restrained the magnificence of nature thanks to a new direct approach to the natural world, a trend that developed especially in the 1820s and 1830s with the development of out-door painting. This new artistic orientation dominated by an increasing directness and informality would culminate at the end of the century in Impressionism.
Alessandro Castelli's art can be therefore situated on the boundaries between the finishing Romantic aesthetic and the beginning of a new realism that will particularly developed in Italy in the school of the so-called Macchiaoli (1860-1880), whose vigorous brushwork and brilliant colours recall the contemporary experiment of the French school of Barbizon (1830-1870) and the further artistic development of The Hague school (1870-1890).

Although France and England became the new centres of landscape art in the 18th century, the Italian and Dutch traditions retained their authority. However the Arcadian vision of Italy increasingly tended towards a more precise observation of nature. Some of the most exciting developments took place in Venice, in the soft scenes of Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788), inspired by Claude Lorrain (1604-1682), and the fresh, spontaneous landscapes of Marco Ricci (1676-1730). Wealthy patrons, often accompanied by artists, on The Grand Tour, created a market for veduta and capriccio paintings, respectively topographical and fantasist landscape paintings. Landscape conventions were further enriched by foreign artists working in Italy, responding both to the beauty of Italian light and scenery celebrated by the Latin poets and vividly captured in the most popular landscapes of Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)and Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675).

Alessandro Castelli (1809-1902) was born in Rome and was both the pupil and the nephew of Simone Ponsardi before entering the Accademia di San Luca. He specialised in landscape painting and attempt to free his manner from his academic training. He worked as an engraver at the Calcografia Camerale (the Vatican Printing-office nowadays Museum). He participated to the battle of Rome in 1849 and recorded the event in many drawings. In 1851 he started travelling in Europe and returned to Rome only in 1870. A few examples of his art are housed in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Rome.

This painting is a good example of Alessandro Castelli's landscape paintings, a category in which he specialised. It shows a rocky landscape displaying a magnificent nature in which figures seem to disappear, combining thus ideals of the Romanticism with Classical compositional requirements. Castelli's art can be seen as part of the new development of landscape paintings in the 19th century which would concentrate on a more direct approach to nature and eventually flourish in the Impressionists' innovative experiments.

1070-1886