Angelo Morbelli

Collection of Dr. Benoldi;

With Galleria Fogliato, Torino, in 1975, in the possession of Dr. Benoldi;

With Bottegantica, Milan-Bologna;

Private collection, Varese;

Private collection, Milan;

On loan to the Pinacoteca Fondazione Cassa Risparmio of Tortona 2013-2015;

Anonymous sale, Pandolfini Casa d'Aste, Florence, 19 April 2016, lot 71.

Probably Venice, IX. Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Città di Venezia - La Biennale di Venezia, 1910, no. 18 (as titled Pomeriggio al Tramonto);

Turin, Galleria d'Arte Fogliato di Torino, Pittori dell'800, 1975, no. 31;

Tortona, Pinacoteca Fondazione Cassa Risparmio di Tortona, Il Divisionismo, 2013-2015, no. 57.

L. Mallé, La pittura dell'Ottocento piemontese, Turin 1976, p. 293, fig. 591;

Ottocento e Novecento italiano, Bologna 2000, p. 16;

Ottocento. Catalogo dell’arte italiana dell’Ottocento, Milan 2001, vol. 30, p. 306, repr.;

F. Caroli, Il Divisionismo. Pinacoteca Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio Tortona, Milan 2015, ill.

In parallel with the emergence of pointillism in France, the north of Italy saw the birth of its own movement involving division of the brushstroke into small juxtapositions of colours, so that the viewer’s eye became the site of optical fusion. Promoted by the gallerist and painter Vittore Grubicy, it became known in 1891 at the Triennale di Brera in Milan, with the exhibition of works by Emilio Longoni, Giovanni Segantini and Angelo Morbelli, three of its principal exponents. Divisionism sought to address new subjects, touching on the economic, social and political problems that Italy was experiencing at the turn of the twentieth century.

Angelo Morbelli (1853–1919) was one of the leading figures of Divisionism and had been associated with Grubicy gallery since 1887. Trained at the Accademia di Brera in Milan from 1867 to1876, he then visited Paris and London before devoting himself to the study of pictorial matter and theories of colour, essential for movement. He applied the principles of Divisionism to both landscapes and social subjects, themes that were common to the group.

From 1895, he spent his summers in the mountains of northern Italy – in Lombardy, Piedmont and the Val d’Aosta – where he concentrated on variations in optical effects according to the season, time of day and weather. His study of nature and sky was manifested in luminous and colourful landscape paintings.

In 1907, Morbelli painted this Sunset Over the Mountains, a landscape at twilight which allowed the artist to add to his series of mountain views, one of the dominant motifs in his Divisionist landscapes, especially towards the end of his career. With touches of colour, he makes the outlines of the crests dissolve in the waning light of the sun. He plays on the luminous vibration and contrasts between the dark foreground, gradually submerged in the dusk, and the background where a warm light softens between the two peaks. A topographical study of the Alps, with their ruggedness and vegetation, gives way to a combination of light and colour, so that the atmosphere becomes the true subject of the painting.

This painting may be compared to Dawn in the Mountains, produced the same year (oil on canvas, 24 x 38 cm, private collection), whose composition is similar. Here again, the mountains are plunged into darkness in the foreground, while in the background a summit towers over the view, illuminated by the dawning light. Morbelli also painted, in the year of his death, Sunset over the Lera (oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm, Milan, private collection) which follows the same pattern: a mountain in semi-darkness in the foreground, gradually fading, with the golden light of the setting sun in the background.