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Video: Children and lovers in the paintings of the "absolute impressionist" Irolly, who was adored by the public and disliked by critics
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In the history of art, this artist has very little place, despite the fact that in his era he was extremely popular and in demand. His contemporaries did not skimp not only on well-deserved praise addressed to him, but also high-profile titles, which not many bother to. Meet master of Italian genre painting - Vincenzo Irolli … He is the "Artist of the Sun", he is the "Stunning Irolly", as well as the "absolute impressionist". Why did it happen that the painter, adored to such an extent, was forgotten and why history bypassed him …
Having looked through the delightful gallery of works of the talented Italian, you will surely notice that Vincenzo Irolli was called the “Artist of the Sun” for a reason. As for his absolute impressionism, here too the experts are right about 100. He used the radiant light so skillfully that his works seem to glow from the inside.
Using various impressionist techniques, the artist "folded" his canvases from textured strokes, as if from delicate petals. And there are works where the viewer sees some fragments as if through scratched glass. Vincenzo also has filigree works in the style of realism, where the soulful faces of lovely Italians are painted so subtly that it seems that they will come to life for another moment. It is the skillful combination of rough texture, roughness and indistinctness, as well as filigree, that give the artist's paintings an extraordinary charm.
This is what delighted the European public more than a century ago. And, I think, today the modern viewer will not remain indifferent, seeing the magnificent works of the Italian master.
About the artist and his work
Italian artist Vincenzo Irolli was born in 1860 in sunny Naples. The boy showed his talent for drawing from early childhood. And by the age of seventeen, he no longer thought of anything other than painting. However, having entered the Academy of Fine Arts and brilliantly studied there for three years, he left his studies. It was after the third year that Vincenzo realized that the eminent masters had nothing more to teach him. Therefore, without much hesitation, he gave up his student life and plunged headlong into his work.
It should be noted that, while still a student, a talented young man exhibited his creative works at exhibitions, which were noted not only by the public, but also by famous masters of that time. Thus, in 1879, a young aspiring artist received the first prize for his painting "Happy Memories" at the 15th exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Naples. This event made him known to the general public and contributed to the decision to leave his studies.
It was 1880 and, free from the Academy, its canons and influence, the young painter began his long artistic career, and quite successfully. And even despite the fact that he had to serve three years of military service in Pavia, this time was not in vain. For the picturesque city of Pavia served Irolli as a splendid plein-air "testing ground" for painting. It was there that the artist developed his technique and found his own style, which soon brought him to a high level of skill.
After returning from service, Irolli almost immediately took part in the exhibition of the Society of Fine Arts in Rome and already then captivated the audience with his extraordinary manner of painting. Inspired, Vincenzo, who from now on was completely left to himself, so selflessly plunged into the creative process, completely surrendering to his favorite work, that he soon gained a huge number of works, and with them great fame. Irolly's paintings began to be in great demand among buyers, and customers flocked to him.
However, from the very beginning, the painter did not work out with the picky Italian critics, although they certainly recognized his talent, calling him "a painter of the first magnitude." However, the main stumbling block was that many art critics considered Irolli's sentimental painting, so popular with the public, to be cheap populism, subordinate to the artist's commercial interests. And for this reason, his name was rarely mentioned in their critical reviews with a positive context. Such artists generally do not survive in art history.
However, the master himself was not very worried and upset. His painting gradually began to win the hearts of the Parisian and Berlin public, and the richest people of the era became his clients. So, in 1891, one of his works was acquired by King Victor Emmanuel III, and three years later, a painting entitled "Christmas in Naples" broke the record of the Berlin auction. It was sold for 23 thousand lire, a record amount for those times.
Irolly, treated kindly by the public, lived a very long and fruitful life, and in his lifetime there were many major national exhibitions and various competitions. He also presented his work at the Paris Salon, where he achieved great success, and at international exhibitions, including in London (1904), Munich (1909) and Barcelona (1911), where he was awarded a bronze medal.
The "artist of the sun" Vincenzo Irolli died in his home with a wonderful view of the Gulf of Naples in the last days of November 1949, at the age of eighty-nine.
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Vincenzo Irolli was mainly a genre painter, but in addition to this, he painted many portraits, and not specific people, but simply collective images of pretty Italians and little children. But, along with vivid maternal figures, sentimental portraits of children and colorful scenes of the daily life of the Neapolitans, he also depicted religious subjects. This topic especially affected the artist at the end of his creative career. And as a result - 10 delightful paintings presented at the Mostra di Arte Sacra in 1936 in Naples.
Today Vincenzo Irolli is unanimously recognized as one of the great Neapolitan artists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, working in a style that art critics have called the "second realism" in Impressionism.
Amazing works of the master can be seen in the Pinacoteca di Capodimonte, the town hall and the Tramontano collection, in the Galleries of Modern Art in Rome, Turin, Milan, Palermo and Piacenza, in the Petit Palace in Paris, the Mulhouse Museum in France and the Revoltella Museum in Trieste. A lot of paintings by the eminent Neapolitan are kept in private collections, mainly by European collectors.
P. S. Vincenzo Irolli "Girl with a Doll"
In our experimental series of publications based on paintings by famous artists, a touching essay is devoted to this painting: Roads that choose us: A dedication story to Vincenzo Irolli's painting "Girl with a Doll"
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