STEPHEN ONGPIN FINE ART

GIUSEPPE CASCIARO Ortelle 1863-1941

Cliffs at Capri, with a Fishing Boat

Pastel on paper, laid down on board. Signed and dated 11 Ag 08 GCasciaro at the lower right. Inscribed H 39 - Le mare(?) a Capri on the backing board. 355 x 414 mm. (14 x 16 1/4 in.)

Born in the province of Lecce, the painter and pastellist Giuseppe Casciaro enjoyed a successful career of some sixty years. He was a pupil of Filippo Palizzi, Gioacchino Toma, Stanislao Lista and Domenico Morelli at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples, where he won numerous prizes. Although he also painted in oils, Casciaro developed a particular proficiency for landscape drawings in pastel. He may have first been inspired to take up the medium in 1885, when a series of pastel drawings by the artist Francesco Paolo Michetti was shown in Naples. Two years later, in 1887, Casciaro exhibited a series of eleven pastel landscapes of his own, and he remained devoted to the medium throughout his life. He settled on the hillside quarter of Naples known as the Vomero, for some time sharing a studio with the painter Attilio Pratella, and his preferred subject matter were views in and around Naples, together with the nearby islands of Capri and Ischia.

Between 1892 and 1896 Casciaro travelled regularly to , where he had a one-man exhibition and received commissions from the dealer Adolphe Goupil. He exhibited frequently in Naples and at the Biennale in Venice, and won a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. Casciaro was appointed a professor at the Accademia in Naples in 1902, and by 1906 was also engaged as a tutor in pastel drawing to the Queen of , Elena di Savoia. Among his important supporters was the dealer and collector Ferruccio Stefani, who assiduously promoted his work in both Italy and South America. Casciaro’s work was also exhibited throughout Europe; in Munich, Barcelona, Madrid, , Prague, Vienna, Athens and St. Petersburg, as well as in San Francisco, Tokyo and, through the influence of Stefani, Buenos Aires and Santiago. Paintings and pastels by Casciaro are today in the collections of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte and the Museo del Novecento in Naples, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

Giuseppe Casciaro was one of the finest practitioners of the pastel landscape in Italy in the late 19th century, and his pastels were greatly admired by collectors and connoisseurs. The author of an early monograph on the artist noted that his pastels displayed ‘an extraordinarily perceptive refinement and a solidity of touch’1, and likened his accomplishments in the medium to that of such predecessors and contemporaries as Michetti, Giuseppe de Nittis, and Edouard Manet. The Neapolitan poet Salvatore Di Giacomo, a close friend of the artist, chose to describe the pastel landscapes of Casciaro in lyrical terms: ‘A pastel by Casciaro resembles both Bach and Mozart; it is sometimes both tragic and profound, a moving Beethoven-like passage. This elegance is delightful: this spirit, this taste are rare: this pleasant and assured strength, it does not oppress you but it pulls you: and the voice of this lovely artist has all the accents: it has the ardour and the sigh, the impetus and the tenderness, a cry and a murmur.’2

Casciaro often worked on Capri over the course of his long career. This large and vibrant landscape, dated the 11th of August 1908, is a particularly fine and fresh example of his mastery of the pastel medium, and is likely to have been intended as an exhibition piece.

1. ‘una straordinaria finezza percettiva e ad una solidita di tocco’; Alfredo Schettini, Giuseppe Casciaro, Naples, 1952, p.22.

2. ‘Un pastello di Casciaro ha del Bach e del Mozart; e talvolta è tragico e profondo, anche, come una commossa voce beethoveniana. Questa eleganza è deliziosa: questo spirito, questo gusto son rari: questa forza piacevole e sicura, non vi opprime ma vi trascina: e la voce di questo adorabile artista ha tutti gli accenti: ha la foga ed il sospiro, l’impeto e la tenerezza, un grido e un sussurro.’