Guess the Artwork

Colazione in giardino - Breakfast in the garden (1883) by Giuseppe De Nittis now in the Pinacoteca De Nittis in Barletta, Apulia.

De Nittis was born in Barletta, Apulia,  where he first studied under Giovanni Battista Calò.

After being expelled in 1863 from the Instituto di Belle Arti in Naples, which he considered too beholden to the classical tradition, for insubordination, he came into contact with some of the artists known as the Macchiaioli, a group of landscape, portrait and genre painters, flourishing from about 1850 to 1880, based in Florence.  

To develop his skills, he moved to Paris in 1867 where he became a friend of Degas and Manet, welcomed Parisian intellectuals and artists to his home (Zola, Daudet, Goncourt, Heredia, Dumas son, Duranty…), and was admired by many critics. 

A participant in the Impressionist adventure at Nadar’s since the start, he gained a reputation as an artist in Paris – as did many other foreign artists at the time –  where he often  exhibited his  work at the Salon as of 1869, including some of hi best impressionist paintings such as The Victoria Embankment, London or Breakfast in the Garden.

In 1887 De Nittis exhibited twelve paintings in The Exposition Universelle, was awarded a gold medal and  received the Légion d’honneur. In 1884, at the age of 38, he died suddenly of a stroke at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Works by De Nittis are in many public collections, including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, British Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His paintings Return from the Races and The Connoisseurs are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.