It has become voguish for museum curators to present works by undervalued artists, oft from third world countries or by African-Americans, especially women. The Phillips Collection has joined this leaning but diverts from this trend by presenting the first exhibition in the United States of Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-84), a white male from Italy.  Although not widely known in the USA, he was a celebrated artist of his time. His paintings are in renowned collections as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, British Museum in London, Chicago’s Art Institute, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Middlebury College’s Art Museum, Washington’s National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  Federico Zeri (1921-98), the eminent art historian, called him “Italy’s greatest artist of the 19th century” and “Italy’s Sisley, Monet, and Pissarro”.  While not a bedazzling exhibition, nonetheless it is one that yields new insights into Impressionist art beyond its traditional cast of historical artists. De Nittis’s brand of paintings links the styles of Salon art with an idiosyncratic interpretation of Impressionism.  

The Phillips Collection organized this exhibition with the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Pinacoteca Giuseppe De Nittis, the City of Barletta, Italy, and the Region of Puglia with the Fondazione Pino Pascali. The Director of the Phillips, Dorothy Kosinski has said, “Our exhibition shines a spotlight on his influential role on Impressionist art, which continues to engage and delight audiences.” This show will only be shown at the Phillips and features approximately 73 artworks from noted private collections and museums along with a scholarly 250-page catalogue.  The guest Curator Renato Miracco, Curator of the Pinacoteca Giuseppe De Nittis expressed, that “He was a model for a generation of European painters and an innovator who drew inspiration from the artistic landscape of his time.  This exhibition, created to rediscover the artist and the links between him and his French colleagues, explores his close friendships with Degas, Manet and Caillebotte and firmly cements De Nittis as a significant artist within the realm of Impressionism.” The paintings are chronologically arranged in thematic sections, presenting the viewer a range of his subjects and artistic evolution. 

By the 19^th century Italy lost its status as a world center of painting and instead many young international artists came to Paris and Provence as well as the UK.  Innovative painters as Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and Turner attracted them including Giuseppe De Nittis.  He was born in 1846 in Barletta, in the southern province of Puglia, one of the wealthiest districts of the city. His family’s home was a center of social activity and cultural exchange. Unfortunately in 1861at the age of 10 De Nittis was orphaned and moved with his older brothers to Naples where he studied at the Reale Institutoe di Belle Arti.  Because of his outspoken personality he was expelled in 1863 for insubordination.  Despite this he launched his career with the exhibition of two paintings at the 1864 Neapolitan Promotrice and thereafter became associated with a group of Italian painters known as the Machiaioli who were active in Tuscany and showed works in Florence. The most celebrated of these included Giuseppe Abbai, Cristiano, Banti, Odoardo Barrani and Vincenzo Cabianca to name a few. Additionally De Nittis spent time in Rome and Naples that further expanded his artistic practice.

In 1867 he moved to Paris and came into contract with the art dealer Adolphe Goupil who admired his work but requested that De Nittis make saleable paintings of rococo genre costume scenes for an enthusiastic market. He gained some visibility by showing works in the Salon however with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he fled Paris in 1868.  Returning to Italy he preferred to paint from nature where he developed a style that eventually became his form of Impressionism. 

Having had time to experiment and engage in the study of outdoor lighting De Nittis returned to Paris in 1872.  When Mt. Vesuvius erupted on 26^th April 1872, he revisited Naples to witness this natural phenomenon –the volcano’s explosion, generating dramatic skies, delivered varying perspectives of light on the landscape and sky. Also, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius offered the artist a rare occasion to implement his plein-air skills since it was essential to work outdoors.  For nearly a year he daily climbed the mountain producing over 70 works. His use of warm and earthy colors accentuated the heat of the volcano and sunshine on Vesuvius.  Trying to capture the dry and hot atmosphere of the setting he used only a few basic colors, especially warm and earthy colors to accentuate the heat of the volcano and while the presence of figures was minimal.  Even though Adolphe Goupil encouraged him to explore this subject he rejected De Nittis’s expressive explorations of nature saying they were too experimental.

At the Phillips two stunning yet dissimilar compositions hang in near proximity of one another: Vesuvius Eruption 1872 (left), depicts not only partially filled dark skies laden with ash and smoke but also sunlight and glowing red clouds and bursts of sunlight. The radiant light on the people walking down the mountain accentuates the scale of nature to humanity. The other, Eruption of Vesuvius 1872, depicts a darker and gloomier scene where the volcanic murky ash dominates much of the composition.

Returning to Paris he gained respect at the Salon of 1874 with the painting Che freddo! (It’s So Cold!), below, that was enthusiastically received.  Moreover in the same year Degas invited him to participate in the First Impressionist Exhibition in which he exhibited five works.  De Nittis was the only the Italian and the sole foreigner in the exhibition. Although showing with the Impressionists was a prominent achievement, not all of the Impressionists readily accepted him, especially Renoir who resented his success and didn’t appreciate his approach to sketching the composition outdoors and then completing the composition in his studio. His close friendships with Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and Gustave Caillebotte were significant in expanding De Nittis’s artistic growth.  A selection of paintings by his artist friends is also included in the exhibit for stylistic comparison and their influence on De Nittis.

“Giuseppe De Nittis’s career flourished in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s. He was the sole Italian Impressionist painter and there is no telling how practice might have evolved had he not died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage.”

From 1874 after he returned from Naples until his untimely death on August 21, 1884, at age 38, De Nittis produced an exceptional body of work.  His focus on the Paris streets, boulevards, squares and parks resulted in a new direction for his painting.  Having spent time in London in 1873, he had observed the atmospheric effects of its pervading fog and the rhythms and sensibility of a robust cosmopolitan urban life.  In his portrayals of street life in Paris and London one senses a melding of Impressionist idiosyncratic mood along with realist extemporaneousness akin to the photographic imagery of Eugene Atget’s Parisian city landscapes.  The candidness depicted in Parisiennes in the Place de la Concorde, 1875, The National Gallery and the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (London) 1878 and the Parfumerie Violet – Corner of Boulevard des Capucines and Rue Scribe, 1880 evinces the impact of the immediate and familiar providing one with both a flash of recognition along with an amazing novel depiction of the ordinary.  The French art critic Philippe Burty, an early supporter of realism and Impressionism expressed “De Nittis knows more about Paris than the Parisians themselves.”  These dynamic, realist images were sketched en plein air but completed back in his studio.  As the decade unfolded De Nittis’s work became more successful and his retrospective of 12 pictures at The Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878 won him a gold medal and the Légion d’honneur. 

At this time the reconstruction of Paris was underway due to the damage done by the bombardment from both the Prussian armies and the revolutionaries who had defaced public monuments. Scaffolding was widespread on major buildings all over the city.  De Nittis in the street scene The Place des Pyramides, Paris, 1883? captures the vibrancy of the city along with the looming skeletal structures. 

Although Degas and Manet are renowned for their portrayals of the Bourgeosie at the Races De Nittis keenly painted this subject. Two excellent works include The Races at Longchamp, 1883 (left) and The Races at Auteuil – Next to the Stove 1880–81, [a preparatory study].  In both works he captures the excitement of the crowd in a moody mist.  The latter work is especially intriguing because the woman in the foreground kicks her leg up as if she doing a type of impromptu dance in front of an outdoor fire pit while members of fashionable society dart disapproving glances. This rendering in oil was to be the middle part of the racing triptych that De Nittis created between 1880 and 1881 however the final composition was executed in pastel. The finished central panel is more subdued because of the inclusion of a pedigreed dog-standing alert on a chair and the woman’s restrained kicking. 

Nighttime gatherings were a distinctive type of painting of both the Impressionists as well as De Nittis.  Being a successful painter De Nittis was accepted into French Society resulting in both his home becoming a center for social gatherings and he being a frequent guest at eminent salons. The painting of Princess Mathilde’s salon, 1883 is one of his late works disclosing his interest in the use of chiaroscuro. He portrays an intimate scene of her guests in a mysterious crowded luxurious interior room immersed in artificial light, with the skin of the female subjects in lavish gowns stroked by dim light.  

One of his last and perhaps his most technically accomplished paintings was Breakfast in the Garden, 1884 (above) in which his son and wife are having a pleasant meal in a lovely courtyard setting. This is a very compassionate image showing an elegantly dressed mother glancing lovingly at her soon who feeds a duck on the lawn.  De Nittis’s methodical treatment of every detail from the reflecting surfaces of the china, crystal and metal is exquisite. The framing of the figures against the deep space of the sunlit garden reveals the artist’s ability to paint a   casual scene as if it is of the moment in a photograph.

Giuseppe De Nittis’s career flourished in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s. He was the sole Italian Impressionist painter and there is no telling how practice might have evolved had he not died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was not because of his lack of imaginative ability that he didn’t achieve international posthumous fame.  For several decades his paintings were shown at the Venice Biennale in 1901, 1914, and 1928 and a retrospective exhibition was organized in Barletta in 1934.

Be that as it may, a major factor contributing to his obscurity until recently was the distribution of his oeuvre amongst a lot of private collections and in provincial museums.  The Pinacoteca De Nittis in Barletta holds a large number of his work (many are included in this display).  Located in southern Italy, off the “beaten track of historians, curators and collectors,” few got to see this accomplished painter’s work.  The Phillips Collection has done a great service to the history of Impressionist art by organizing this significant exhibition and assembling such a substantially informative catalogue.

De Nittis is a central figure to the aesthetic and institutional upheavals of 1870s Paris. His urban scenes of Paris feature innovative arrangements and plein air subjects painted with a detailed realism that depicts a sophisticated and economically booming city—a choice unique to De Nittis’s work. New research will be presented in the exhibition about De Nittis’s friendships with Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet, and his early collaborations in Naples with a young Gustave Caillebotte. Work from all periods of De Nittis’s career will be featured along with select works by his most important artist friends in Paris.

By: Elaine A. King, Senior Contributing Writer

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC—through February 12, 2023