"Oscar RICCARDI (1864 -1935)- Aristocratic villa on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius - Dated 1884"
Oil on panel, annotated "Remembrance of Vesuvio",
signed and dated at the bottom right.
Dimensions: 13.5 x 22.5 cm
The Italian painter O. Riccardi gives us here a view of the Vesuvian countryside from which the sunny facade of a villa emerges, a spot of light towards which our gaze converges.
The scene is painted with spontaneity and great delicacy.
With a light and fine touch, the painter sketches the landscape, a few more impasto touches highlight the vegetation around the villa.
It is probably an old luxurious residence of the Neapolitan nobility. In 1738, King Charles III built a royal residence on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, seduced by the landscape and the proximity of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The nobles and the court then built their own villas.
Oscar Riccardi began his studies with the painter Bernardo Celentano and was also influenced by the "living" style of Domenico Morelli. He first painted genre scenes but then turned to painting landscapes and coastal seascapes. He exhibited frequently in Naples and sold his works nationally and internationally.
Ricciardi appears in the Catalogo dell Arte Italiana dell Ottocento by Giorgio Mondadori and in the Dictionary of Painters, Sculptors, Draftsmen and Engravers by Benezit