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Lot Essay
Although relatively unknown outside his home country, Nomellini is recognized in Italy as a major painter at the crossroads between Divisionism, Symbolism and Post-Impressionism. Building first on the art of painters such as Angelo Morbelli and Pelizza da Volpedo, whose subjects were rooted in social themes of everyday life, but rendered in a patchwork palette of complementary colours, at the turn of the 20th century Nomellini moved towards an ever freer and more expressionistic pictorial language which is not dissimilar to that of Gaetano Previati, characterised by vibrant colours, a profound sense of luminosity, and more lyrical themes.
Between 1895 and 1899 at the Venice Biennalle, Nomellini would have seen works by foreign contemporaries such as Whistler, von Stuck, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon, and Klimt. Given the lack of Symbolist influences within the artist's Florentine and Genovese cultural circle, only these foreign influences can explain the sudden vacillation in Nomellini's work between a rather visionary naturalism and more overtly Symbolist pictures.
The present lot is one of several paintings by the artist of elegant women walking in countryside or parkland, influenced by the frequent stays with his family in the southern Italian countryside of Puglia, Capri and Elba, but with a treatment that here is particularly exuberant compared to the artist's more naturalist renditions of the subject. The women appear as modern embodiments of ancient nymphs, gliding through a vibrant, fiery setting, in which the landscape and southern sky seem to blend in an explosive mix of violets, reds and blues, expressed with confidently applied lapping brushstrokes of sinuous colour. Nomellini has moved away from the narrative of a family walk, which often describes his treatment of this subject, towards a work which aims instead towards a purely decorative effect.
Between 1895 and 1899 at the Venice Biennalle, Nomellini would have seen works by foreign contemporaries such as Whistler, von Stuck, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon, and Klimt. Given the lack of Symbolist influences within the artist's Florentine and Genovese cultural circle, only these foreign influences can explain the sudden vacillation in Nomellini's work between a rather visionary naturalism and more overtly Symbolist pictures.
The present lot is one of several paintings by the artist of elegant women walking in countryside or parkland, influenced by the frequent stays with his family in the southern Italian countryside of Puglia, Capri and Elba, but with a treatment that here is particularly exuberant compared to the artist's more naturalist renditions of the subject. The women appear as modern embodiments of ancient nymphs, gliding through a vibrant, fiery setting, in which the landscape and southern sky seem to blend in an explosive mix of violets, reds and blues, expressed with confidently applied lapping brushstrokes of sinuous colour. Nomellini has moved away from the narrative of a family walk, which often describes his treatment of this subject, towards a work which aims instead towards a purely decorative effect.