Antonio Fontanesi’s landscapes mirror his intimately romantic nature, making him one of the protagonists of 19th century Italian and European painting and engraving.
In 1850, he moved to Geneva, where he met the art dealer Victor Brachard and the painter Alexandre Calame. In 1855, he visited the Universal Exhibition in Paris where he appreciated the landscape painting of the painters of the ‘Barbizon school’ – in particular Camille Corot and Constant Troyon. However, he completed his training with the study of the great masters of English Romantic painting, such as William Turner, John Constable, and Thomas Gainsbourough.
In 1867 he was in Florence, where he frequented the Macchiaioli and the Caffè Michelangelo circle: he painted Tramonto sull’Arno at Cristiano Banti’s house, now in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Palazzo Pitti. This was a theme dear to his heart, which he tackled with a more immediate approach than the classicist vision of the Grand Tour. The same approach is found in Serata lungo l’Arno, a painting of large dimensions that is the protagonist of the section of the catalogue of Old Master Paintings that will be exhibited in Genoa on 9 June 2022 (lot 1309, estimate 20,000 – 30,000 euros). Here, we can find the poetry of the real, determined by a romantic sensibility, illuminated by an unequalled light and at the same time characterised by the best fidelity to the real of en plein air painting.
His desire as the last of the Romantics is to render the rapid change of light at sunset on the landscape, thus restoring his free impression and lyrical vocation of the real.
