Mattia Jona, Master Drawings and Prints, Japanese Prints - Piazzetta Guastalla 5, 20122 Milan, Italy, tel (+39) 02 8053315

GIOVANNI FATTORI (Livorno 1825 - Florence 1908) STRADA NEI DINTORNI DI FIRENZE (Street near Florence)
Zinc etching, Baboni-Malesci XXXVI. A fine, wiped clean proof impression, printed with black ink on Chine appliqué mounted on white wove paper. A first state exists (only one impression known) before the signature, in the Rosselli collection, at the GDS, Florence (GAM 210). Our impression has been inked in selective way, without inking the lines in the bottom foreground which define the street. The overall effect is a stronger sunlight on the scene. Signed in pencil 'Giovanni Fattori'. With large margins. Paper thinning in a few areas on the verso, generally in very good condition. To the platemark 126 x 150 mm, the entire sheet measuring 322 x 386 mm.

Giovanni Fattori, possibly the most important painter of the nineteenth century in Italy, received his first instruction in drawing from a lesser painter of his native town. In 1846 Fattori moved to Florence to attend the Academy. During the 1850s Fattori joined the innovative artists, called 'Macchiaioli', who met at the Caffè Michelangelo in Florence and were champions of a new technique and style to contrast the conventional academic language. During those years, he still produced works that could be attributed to the historical-romantic school but his interest in studying from life also extended to landscape painting and the military life of the day became the subject of his first experiments in painting using the "macchia" technique. In 1867, after the death of his first wife, Fattori frequently stayed in the Maremma region which became the ideal backdrop for his works. Fattori began etching in the early 1880s, when he was nearly sixty; quite soon he was able to appreciate the difference of expression he could achieve using this new medium. A real ‘peintre-graveur’, he continued with etching his artistic research on light and essential shapes in reality.