Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 89. Giuseppe de Nittis Barletta 1846 – 1884 Saint-Germain-en-Laye Eruption of Vesuvius, 1872 Between 1871-72, the Italian painter Giuseppe de Nittis became an obsessive chronicler of Vesuvius and the “wild beauty”1 of its landscape. Every day for almost a year, the artist made a six-hour round trip up the mountain, and he produced a group of around 70 small-format plein air studies in oils on panel. De Nittis painted with a remarkable economy of means, making use of the colour and grain of the unprimed wood, and created bold compositions which sometimes border on the abstract. This painting consists almost entirely of a close-up view of solidified lava streams, rocks and plumes of white smoke, with only a thin stretch of blue sky to give it a sense of perspective. It has the immediacy of a snapshot, betraying the influence of contemporary photography. 1“beauté sauvage”, Giuseppe de Nittis, Notes et souvenirs du peintre Joseph de Nittis, Paris, 1895, p. 90.
Between 1871-72, the Italian painter Giuseppe de Nittis became an obsessive chronicler of Vesuvius and the “wild beauty”1 of its landscape. Every day for almost a year, the artist made a six-hour round trip up the mountain, and he produced a group of around 70 small-format plein air studies in oils on panel. De Nittis painted with a remarkable economy of means, making use of the colour and grain of the unprimed wood, and created bold compositions which sometimes border on the abstract. This painting consists almost entirely of a close-up view of solidified lava streams, rocks and plumes of white smoke, with only a thin stretch of blue sky to give it a sense of perspective. It has the immediacy of a snapshot, betraying the influence of contemporary photography. 1“beauté sauvage”, Giuseppe de Nittis, Notes et souvenirs du peintre Joseph de Nittis, Paris, 1895, p. 90.