BRANCACCIO, CARLO (1861-1920)

“Mt. Vesuvius From Capri” (c.1906-1907)
Oil on canvas
69 x 118cm
Signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Brancaccio was a prominent, award-winning Italian Impressionist & Orientalist. He initially had studied mathematics, but abandoned this to study painting by age 22 years. He was mentored by legendary Neopolitan landscape painter, Eduardo Dalbono. His main subjects were city streets, sea- and landscapes, mostly vedute of Naples. At the 1887 Promotrice of Naples he displayed "Passe-partout", and many sketches of the city including the interiors of churches. In 1888, he displayed a large work, "Seascape of Capri"; in 1889, "Toledo in the Rain"; and in same year at the Brera Exposition in Milan, he exhibited the "Piazza of the Carmine of Naples". He won a gold medal at the Exhibition in Rome in 1893. He also painted Neapolitan genre subjects, including: "Ore tristi (1898)"; "Impressioni di Napoli" (Berlin 1890); and "Strada di Almalfi" (1897). In the 1910s he exhibited in Naples, but made frequent stays in Paris, successfully introducing himself to the European market, especially French and English. His favorite subjects remain the Neapolitan seascapes and landscapes, which are of great interest to foreign collectors, but there is no lack of impressions drawn from the Parisian landscape. In the French city he slowly developed a faster and more dynamic style, with an impressionist brushwork. The cuts in the views are often daring and close, the themes most linked to international taste, aroused not only by contact with Paris, but also by frequent stays in Venice. The date of the painting can be calculated by the smoking Mt. Vesuvius, which experienced it's most deadly eruption on 5 April 1906, that killed more than 100 people and ejected the most lava ever recorded from a Vesuvian eruption.