SIGNORINI, Telemaco

The mid-nineteenth century in Italy was the period of the Risorgimento, the movement that culminated in Italian unification. That movement provided the political and cultural backdrop for one of the most important and influential groups in Italian art in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Macchiaioli. This group of landscape, portrait and genre painters, flourishing from about 1850 to 1880, was based on Florence. The core of the Macchiaioli consisted of eleven painters born between 1824 and 1838, most important of them among the older painters were Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Serafino de Tivoli, and Vincenzo Cabianca, while Giuseppe Abbati and Telemaco Signorini belonged to the younger. There were some other artists associated with the group to varying extent, such as Guglielmo Ciardi, Giuseppe de Nittis, Federigo Zandomeneghi, and Giovanni Boldini. The last-named three all took their bearings from France, and eventually moved to Paris.

Signorini showed an early interest in sociocritical writings and in French Positivism. This interest was also expressed in paintings that articulated his social concerns, such as the impressive Insane Ward at San Bonifacio’s, Florence. When it was exhibited in Turin in 1870, the painting sparked violent controversy. Degas, a friend of Signorini since the latter’s visit to Paris, responded enthusiastically to its close observation of real conditions.

During a stay in Edinburgh in 1881, Signorini made several trips to Leith, where he collected impressions of this Scottish town that were later incorporated into this boldly cropped painting. The large advertisement sign for Rob Roy, a Robin Hood of Scotland and a character from a novel by Sir Walter Scott, was also intended as an allusion to Garibaldi, whose nickname was “Rob Roy of Italy.”

The composition evokes certain elements of Degas’s art.

While he lived in Settignano, Signorini painted a number of scenes showing subjects of this town right outside of Florence at the foothills toward Fiesole. In this canvas, he achieved a contemplative and harmonious union of naturalism and delicate abstraction. The white cat sitting by itself at the backyard table seems to invite the viewer to join the tranquil morning atmosphere.

Signorini’s interest in social realism was renewed in1888 during a trip to the island of Elba off the Tuscan coast, which was known for its salt refineries as well as its penal colony. Here the artist chose the moment of an inspection in the prison baths in the town of Portoferraio. The open area in the foreground draws the viewer into the pictorial space, thereby making him a participant in this gloomy event. The subject calls to mind van Gogh’s depiction of Prisoners Exercising (after Dor�), painted in 1890.

Of the Macchiaioli, only Signorini consistently painted scenes of contemporary urban life. In the present work, both Signorini’s choice of subject and his bright, fresh technique constituted an affinity with Impressionist paintings of a similar kind. Of all the Macchiaioli, Signorini was the most open to Impressionism.