VESUVIUS À LA GOUACHE
A series of gouaches from the nineteenth century depicting a nighttime eruption of Mount Vesuvius was included in our spring auction of furniture and antique paintings. They rose well beyond their starting price. As a subject, it has been popular to such an extent as to already become an icon in the first years after the Restoration and it has always been quite sought after by collectors: from the boom of the sixties in the twentieth century and to date, despite the crisis of the antiques market . In 1631, when the volcano of Vesuvius awakened, it became the icon of the city of Naples. Its eruptions attract scholars and visitors from around the world. It was first depicted for devotional purposes, with San Gennaro beside its peak, and later as a mustsee of the Grand Tour (together, of course, with the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii), and has been the subject of many famous foreign painters. Claude-Joseph Vernet, Hubert Robert and Jean-Honoré Fragonard set new iconographic canons for the representation of the Vesuvius and its surroundings which, simplified, become the reference models for the following century, and for the more artisanal production which also includes also the lots in question.
At the end of the 18th century the German Jacques Philipp Hackert (1737-1807) revived the gouache technique in Naples. However, Pietro Fabris (doc. 1754-1779) used the gouache technique in a series of paintings of the Vesuvius erupting commissioned by Sir William Hamilton (1779), as a supplement of five illustrations to the work Campi Phlegraei, Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies. Finally, the French Pierre Jacques Volaire (1729 – 1802?) helped to present the theme of night-time eruptions, using of reds, oranges and dark skies with barely sketched figures in the foreground. The production of night views Vesuvius à la gouache on a large scale, with a so-to-speak more popular sensitivity, became widespread in those same years, and were in great demand by the educated travellers of the Grand Tour. The gouaches, being more often painted on paper (but sometimes also on silk or parchment), were easy to carry and able to satisfy the needs of those foreigners who wanted even just a little keepsake of the city, not too expensive, which had to be small due to space and weight requirements. They had to convey, visually and with a quick and almost summarized execution, the moment of the eruption.
The gouache technique is not far as to the outcome, but definitely cheaper than oil painting, while even if using water as a base solvent as in water color painting, differs from the latter by the addition of gum (Arabic and Senegal gum, shellac). These glues were used to make the pigment stick better to the medium, which was generally paper. Another difference from water color painting is that the gouache uses a white diluted with water, which together with pigments and the glue, creates a diffuse opacity. So the colors look velvety and almost threedimensional. They dry very quickly, so they do not allow second thoughts. Thus, the execution must be fast and quick. The most common medium, as said, is rough or smooth paper. Various sizes were used, with the most common being 40 x 26 cm (15.75 x 10.24 in). Generally gouaches feature a gray or black margin, or passe-par-tout, on which the title of the represented subject is often written.
The finest craftsmen, both active in Naples at the end of the 18th century, were Saverio della Gatta (doc. 1777-1827) and Alessandro d’Anna (doc. 1779 – 1810). They were followed by many others, including precisely the authors of the works in question such as Camillo de Vito (active between the late 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries) and Gioacchino La Pira (doc. 1839 – 1870). The first is likely the author of the work that represents the eruption of 1830 (lot 367), the second, active in the second half of the 19th century, painted the eruptions of 1812 and 1839 (lots 369 and 370). The lots 365 and 366 are anonymous and describe the famous eruption of 1794, which destroyed Torre del Greco and that is described by the sources of the time as: [...] you could see at the base of Vesuvius a majestic river of fire, two miles long and a quarter mile wide [...] at the source of this lava river there were continuous and extremely high jets of burning matter [...] and at the end you could see the dismal show of the fire of the Tower (S. Breislak, A. Winspeare, Memory on the eruption of the Vesuvius that happened in the evening of 15 June, Naples, 1794). All paintings like these have the common trait of describing the natural phenomenon that is also an aesthetic ideal of the Enlightenment period: namely the Pictoresque ideal. So too, was the Sublime quality, the idea of Nature’s power with respect to the human being, always dominated by the cosmos and its inscrutable laws (see: Gouaches napoletane del Settecento e dell’Ottocento -Neapolitan gouaches of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-, Catalogue of the exhibition, Museo Pignatelli, December 1985, February 1986, Napoli Electa 1985). A sense of Sublime that we are increasingly losing sight of, since we try to dominate Nature and cancel it in many ways and, perhaps for this reason, we seek it in ancient works of art, even if only as an icon image.
BY Maria Ludovica Vertova
At the end of the 18th century the German Jacques Philipp Hackert (1737-1807) revived the gouache technique in Naples. However, Pietro Fabris (doc. 1754-1779) used the gouache technique in a series of paintings of the Vesuvius erupting commissioned by Sir William Hamilton (1779), as a supplement of five illustrations to the work Campi Phlegraei, Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies. Finally, the French Pierre Jacques Volaire (1729 – 1802?) helped to present the theme of night-time eruptions, using of reds, oranges and dark skies with barely sketched figures in the foreground. The production of night views Vesuvius à la gouache on a large scale, with a so-to-speak more popular sensitivity, became widespread in those same years, and were in great demand by the educated travellers of the Grand Tour. The gouaches, being more often painted on paper (but sometimes also on silk or parchment), were easy to carry and able to satisfy the needs of those foreigners who wanted even just a little keepsake of the city, not too expensive, which had to be small due to space and weight requirements. They had to convey, visually and with a quick and almost summarized execution, the moment of the eruption.
The gouache technique is not far as to the outcome, but definitely cheaper than oil painting, while even if using water as a base solvent as in water color painting, differs from the latter by the addition of gum (Arabic and Senegal gum, shellac). These glues were used to make the pigment stick better to the medium, which was generally paper. Another difference from water color painting is that the gouache uses a white diluted with water, which together with pigments and the glue, creates a diffuse opacity. So the colors look velvety and almost threedimensional. They dry very quickly, so they do not allow second thoughts. Thus, the execution must be fast and quick. The most common medium, as said, is rough or smooth paper. Various sizes were used, with the most common being 40 x 26 cm (15.75 x 10.24 in). Generally gouaches feature a gray or black margin, or passe-par-tout, on which the title of the represented subject is often written.
The finest craftsmen, both active in Naples at the end of the 18th century, were Saverio della Gatta (doc. 1777-1827) and Alessandro d’Anna (doc. 1779 – 1810). They were followed by many others, including precisely the authors of the works in question such as Camillo de Vito (active between the late 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries) and Gioacchino La Pira (doc. 1839 – 1870). The first is likely the author of the work that represents the eruption of 1830 (lot 367), the second, active in the second half of the 19th century, painted the eruptions of 1812 and 1839 (lots 369 and 370). The lots 365 and 366 are anonymous and describe the famous eruption of 1794, which destroyed Torre del Greco and that is described by the sources of the time as: [...] you could see at the base of Vesuvius a majestic river of fire, two miles long and a quarter mile wide [...] at the source of this lava river there were continuous and extremely high jets of burning matter [...] and at the end you could see the dismal show of the fire of the Tower (S. Breislak, A. Winspeare, Memory on the eruption of the Vesuvius that happened in the evening of 15 June, Naples, 1794). All paintings like these have the common trait of describing the natural phenomenon that is also an aesthetic ideal of the Enlightenment period: namely the Pictoresque ideal. So too, was the Sublime quality, the idea of Nature’s power with respect to the human being, always dominated by the cosmos and its inscrutable laws (see: Gouaches napoletane del Settecento e dell’Ottocento -Neapolitan gouaches of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-, Catalogue of the exhibition, Museo Pignatelli, December 1985, February 1986, Napoli Electa 1985). A sense of Sublime that we are increasingly losing sight of, since we try to dominate Nature and cancel it in many ways and, perhaps for this reason, we seek it in ancient works of art, even if only as an icon image.
BY Maria Ludovica Vertova