Raimondo Pereda

Overall the condition of the marble is good with dirt and wear to the surface consistent with age. The bowl of the spoon is reattached. There are a few minor naturally occuring inclusions to the marble. There are a few small chips to the base and there is an abrasion to the drapery behind the girl's proper left hand. There is minor veining consistent with the material. The column is in two sections, and the top revolves. There are a few chips, scratches and splashes of paint to the column.
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The present white marble sculpture represents an infant boy in the steady arms of his big sister, who is holding a spoon tantalisingly out of his young grasp. The boy reaches out in impatience and delight.

The present work demonstrates Raimondo Pereda’s associations with the Italian verismo movement in sculpture, which flourished from the mid-nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth. Art in this style avoided the idealising forms of earlier movements such as Neoclassicism, instead endeavouring to represent a more real and contemporary world. Artists observed nature systematically, and concentrated on objects and people of their present-day for subjects. Quoted in Maltese, Giovanni Fattori in 1903 wrote that verismo should be a means to ‘show posterity our ways’ (op. cit. p. 22).

Pereda’s sculpture of Big Sister does exactly this. It is a genre piece which captures a delightful moment of domestic life in sensitive detail. Pereda demonstrates his highly technical skill with the intricate rendering of the girl’s creased dress and hair. The boy’s chubby skin folds at his wrist as his hand lightly clutches his sister’s arm, while his rounded cheeks are accentuated with his smile and open mouth; this is in direct contrast to the smoother, tauter skin of his older sister, whose form is more structurally defined. His childish temperament is tenderly depicted in his expression and pose; he curls his little toes in joyful agitation. We are left to wonder whether his sister is innocently cooling his food, or knowingly playing with his patience. Either way, the scene captures the sense of a passing moment in time and the peculiarly intimate affection between brother and older sister.

Raimondo Pereda studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan and later became an honorary member of the Brera Academy and a member of the Swiss Federal Commission of Fine Arts. He exhibited frequently at the main Italian Salons and also participated in exhibitions in London, Switzerland, Paris, Brussels and Munich.

RELATED LITERATURE
C. Maltese, Realismo e verismo nella pittura italiana, Milan, 1967, p. 22