Ai bagni di Viareggio is Cabianca’s largest and most ambitious composition to come to the market in the last century, encapsulating a burgeoning modern moment that bridges Realist and Impressionist painting, spanning Italy and France. The painting has neither been exhibited nor published since its debut in April 1866, when it was included in a selling exhibition in Turin for the considerable sum of 1800 lire. From the distinct patches of light illuminating the figures' faces to the puff of smoke hovering above the man’s pipe, Cabianca captures this perfectly ordinary occasion with extraordinary attention. Details of dress, including a figure in green holding an umbrella in the background at left, the delicate hair snood and ribboned-hat worn by the blonde woman in the centre, and the caryatid-like figure balancing a basket of towels on her head, personify the burgeoning seaside economy and new leisure activity in and around Viareggio (fig. 1).
This painting, prominently signed and dated lower centre (fig. 2), was listed, but not illustrated, in the 1866 exhibition catalogue as no. 169, which corresponds to the number stamped lower right, and had erroneously been identified by scholars previously as Al sole, another beach scene dated 1866 (sold at Sotheby’s in London in 1992). A second fragment of a label, bearing the number 428 and visible in the lower right corner, seems to refer to a second, as yet unidentified, exhibition or sale.
Born in Verona in 1827, Vincenzo Cabianca was one of the leading Macchiaioli painters, a group of artists active throughout Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century who, before the French Impressionists, strayed from academic conventions to celebrate subjects taken from everyday life, often painting outdoors to capture the fleeting effects of light and colour. Nearly a decade before the First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1874, this monumental Macchiaioli painting anticipates the plein-air subject and style of beach scenes by such artists as Eugène Boudin, Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet and Édouard Manet. The Macchiaioli, taken from the Italian word macchia, literally 'patch-' or 'spot-maker', were inspired by French Realist painters of the Barbizon school, including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet, much like the Impressionists, with whom they would share stylistic affinities.
On 2 September 1865, Cabianca married Adelaide Lachi, an elementary school teacher in Parma. The couple honeymooned on the coast in Tuscany and visited Viareggio, an emerging seaside resort town on the Tyrrhenian Sea, where Cabianca had been spending summers painting, and the following year painted this monumental scene of figures gathered on the vast Versilia beach. Three young ladies circle around a local fisherman and vendor, carrying a large basket filled with fresh produce to sell to visiting tourists.
Cabianca made several preparatory sketches for the painting, including a careful study of the leftmost figure in the foreground group and a multi-figure sketch of the larger composition, recorded on a now detached sheet from the so-called second Parma sketchbook, where the artist was living at the time, dated 1865, both of which bear the artist’s studio stamp (figs 3 and 4).
Fig. 4 Vincenzo Cabianca, Study of figures by the sea, 1865. Graphite with ink. 12 x 23 cm. Second Parma Sketchbook, folio 12 recto
Viareggio’s famed marine baths, which opened in 1853 and were thought to have medicinal benefits, are visible in the background. Around 1860, large bathing structures were built on stilts along the beach, visible in contemporary photographic postcards for tourists to remember their stay and share their experience with friends and family (figs 5 and 6).
Fig. 6 Postcard of Viareggio, 1867, courtesy of Bagno Quilghini.
Visitors to these seaside establishments wore the latest fashions and accessories, which Cabianca took pains to describe in detail in his monumental composition. Changing tents, like the one visible in the background at right behind the figure balancing a basket of towels on her head, gave beachgoers a private place to change into bathing attire. A preparatory sketch for a similar figure, inscribed and dated Parma 1866, details the drapery of the woman’s skirt (fig. 7).
Cabianca had painted a beach scene at Viareggio in 1865, Spiaggia di Viareggio, which he exhibited in November at the Promotrice di Genova and sold to Prince Odone of Savoy, Duke of Montferrat, for 250 lire. Odone died a few months later, at the age of 19, and much of his collection, including Spiaggia di Viareggio, was donated to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Genoa.
The 1860s proved to be a pivotal decade for Cabianca, who forged important friendships with fellow artists Telemaco Signorini and Giuseppe Abbati. The Macchiaioli collective exhibitions, artistic collaborations, and trips to the seaside towns of Tuscany would culminate in bold new experiments with colour, technique, and composition that characterise the group’s ambitious efforts. It is worth noting that Cabianca's Ai bagni di Viareggio post-dates Signorini's acclaimed L'Alzaia of 1864, by two years (fig. 8).
