Giuseppe De Nittis, La Grénouillère

When Giuseppe De Nittis returned to Paris in 1873, he abandoned genre painting and began doing cityscapes depicting famous corners of the capital and its greener surroundings.

This gave rise to a series of small paintings, all with incredible finesse of detail. The merchant Adolphe Goupil was very fond of them and found that the fashionable style he had sponsored before applied to outdoor painting as well as interiors. The protagonists of these works are, as before, ladies dressed in elegant clothes, modern interpreters of a charming femininity, portrayed in the open air, in luxuriant landscapes: rapid visions of a multicoloured world that found immediate commercial success because the paintings portrayed the wealthy bourgeoisie.

One of the main examples of this series is La Grénouillère, set in the leisure resort of the same name on the outskirts of Paris. Some elegantly dressed ladies are getting ready to board a small row boat that will take them on a serene tour along the course of the Seine. In the foreground is a grassy slope, dotted with colorful wildflowers and bathed by the warm sun of the early afternoon.

The elements that make it up - water, air, the sky seen through the trees - are impalpable: it is up to these natural elements to recreate the charm of the environment. De Nittis describes every detail using a painting technique that anticipates the more properly "impressionist" style that he will begin to adopt the following year.

Giuseppe De Nittis
(Barletta 1846 - St. Germain en Laye 1884)

La Grénouillère, 1873-1874
Oil on canvas, 35 x 28 cm
Signed at bottom left: De Nittis

Provenance
Adolphe Goupil, Paris(1873-1879; Reg. Goupil n. 8541); Albertì Collection, Paris; Lodigiani Collection, Milan; Arturo Toscanini, Milan; Toscanini heirs, Milan; Piero Dini, Montecatini Terme; private collection, Naples