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Lot Essay
Hermann Corrodi and his brother Arnaldo were brought up in an very international artistic milieu, studying first in Geneva and then continuing their training in Rome, both in their father's studio and at the Accademia di San Luca. While Arnaldo never really developed his own individual style, owing much to Mariano Fortuny Marsal, Hermann gained international acclaim as a painter of Genre and Orientalist subjects, through his commissions from the British and Austro-Hungarian royal families. He travelled extensively throughout Europe, North Africa and the Near East, specialising in refined landscapes of the desert, the banks of the Nile and its surrounding villages.
In 1876 Corrodi married a woman from the Italian aristocracy and began to live an ever more cosmopolitan lifestyle, spending his summers in Rome and his winters in Baden-Baden and Hamburg, where he received many commissions from the German upper classes. At the beginning of the 1880s Corrodi embarked on a trip to Egypt, Syria, Cyprus and Constantinople, bringing back a wealth of precious eastern objects which were destroyed when his studio in Rome burned down in 1892. This journey was to provide Corrodi with inspiration for one of his most celebrated works, A Storm in the Desert, Egypt, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881.
Although Corrodi's career belongs to the second half of the century, his style is closer to the academic traditions of the first half of the Ottocento. His refined brushstroke 'est remarquable pas ses dgrads raffins de couleur, ses jeux d'ombre et de lumire, ses sujets d'inspiration aussi bien abstraits que narratifs' (C. Juler, Les Orientalistes de l'Ecole Italienne, Paris, 1994, p. 66).
A similar version of the present work was sold in these Rooms on 18 June 1998, lot 202.
In 1876 Corrodi married a woman from the Italian aristocracy and began to live an ever more cosmopolitan lifestyle, spending his summers in Rome and his winters in Baden-Baden and Hamburg, where he received many commissions from the German upper classes. At the beginning of the 1880s Corrodi embarked on a trip to Egypt, Syria, Cyprus and Constantinople, bringing back a wealth of precious eastern objects which were destroyed when his studio in Rome burned down in 1892. This journey was to provide Corrodi with inspiration for one of his most celebrated works, A Storm in the Desert, Egypt, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881.
Although Corrodi's career belongs to the second half of the century, his style is closer to the academic traditions of the first half of the Ottocento. His refined brushstroke 'est remarquable pas ses dgrads raffins de couleur, ses jeux d'ombre et de lumire, ses sujets d'inspiration aussi bien abstraits que narratifs' (C. Juler, Les Orientalistes de l'Ecole Italienne, Paris, 1994, p. 66).
A similar version of the present work was sold in these Rooms on 18 June 1998, lot 202.