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SILVER Seller in Milano, Italy
Uberto Dell'Orto (Milan 1848 - Milan 1895) Italian painter and engraver. Born into a wealthy upper middle-class family, his studies initially led to a degree in engineering in 1871. However, he did not devote himself to this profession but preferred to first attend the studio of Giovanni Battista Lelli (Bergamo 1827 - Milan 1898) to receive his first painting lessons, then become a pupil of Eleuterio Pagliano (Casale Monferrato 1826 - Milan 1903), a well-known portrait painter and author of historical subjects appreciated at the time, and finally studied nudes at the evening school of the Brera Academy. In 1880, he opened a studio in Milan in Via Agnello and devoted himself mainly to portraits and landscapes, the latter with an attention to detail thanks to his numerous trips to seaside and mountain locations, and succeeding in transferring the feelings he felt into his works. Genre subjects and seascapes prevail in the etchings, which are often compared to the experiences of the Scapigliati, and in particular to the works of Luigi Conconi (Milan 1852 - Milan 1917) due to the author's focus on investigating light. Some twenty etchings are known, all executed between 1876 and 1880 with very mixed results. In some sheets the author 'unnecessarily torments the plate with light and minute marks', in others he 'achieves great expressive power' (Mezzetti). We are plunged into a mountainous glimpse, the centre is dominated by a wooden hut on the edge of a dense fir forest, goats enliven the surroundings. Lush, wild nature seems to have got the better of us, a crouched shepherd in the act of milking a goat on the far left. To the bottom right, more goats are lying on a rock. The sky is furrowed by clouds made in drypoint with a scraper. This engraving is a counterpoint reproduction of the hut in the oil on cardboard Landscape with hut and peasant woman. Engraved signature in cursive at lower right. Excellent impression, very good state of preservation. Wide margins beyond the line of the copper. According to the five states identified by Monforte, the specimen is in an unpublished state between the third and the fourth: with the shepherd milking on the left, with the fir wood covering the huts and the mountains in the background on the right, with black spots adding shadows in the lower left area, but before the addition of the figure of a peasant woman with a basket standing in the centre. Bibliography: A. Mazzetti, L'acquaforte lombarda nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento, n. 299, p. 184; L. Vitali, Incisioni lombarde del secondo Ottocento all'Ambrosiana, n. 26, p. 32; F. Monteforte, Umberto Dell'Orto e il realismo lombardo del secondo Ottocento, n. 123; Palazzo della Permanente, L'acquaforte italiana dell'19th century Rassegna storica, 1955, n. 6.
ID: 11318-1700587617-77053
