Studio: international art (18.1900)

Pietro Fragiacomo

aspects of the lagoons and of the open sea, give
him an especially complete equipment for the
painting of the marine pieces in which he embodies
a great part of his inspiration.

He reveals through them, in the first place, a
quite extraordinary perception of the most delicate
tones of grey—of that translucent grey, familiar to
all who have studied the Italian landscape and
atmosphere, which varies so subtly and yet so de-
cidedly in the various parts of the Peninsula. The
artist's eye seems, in fact, to be endowed with a
peculiar power of appreciating these tones. He
can distinguish, and paint, in a light which many
men would consider darkness; a physical pecu-
liarity that necessarily enhances his enjoyment of
the half-lights, and counts for much in his feeling
for the tender poetry of the night, the evening, and
the early dawn.

Observable, too, are the boldness and sureness
of the artist's brushwork and the skill with which
he turns to advantage the very material upon
which he works. We have before us two studies
of boats, one on canvas and the other on wood.
In the first, the water (there is apparently a swell
after a gale) displays the liquidness, the trans-
parency, and the motion that are only obtainable
by the boldest and most unerring brush-strokes.
In the second, the wood itself plays, in many
places, the part of paint; and with most excellent
effect.

The bold handling of the material does not
mean, however, in Fragiacomo's case any neglect
of drawing. His forms are always accurate, and
he often demands from the purity of his line a
relief which less skilled artists would seek in chiaro-
scuro. He made a sketch for the picture entitled
Le Zattere, Venezia, exhibited in Venice in 1897, in
which, in addition to the delicacy of the reflections
in the evening light, just before the moon is high
enough to make her presence felt, and to the in-
finitely subtle greys and grey-blues of the water,
the effect of distance obtained by the drawing and
disposition of the buildings on the line that starts
from some posts in the left foreground and carries
the eye away to the far-off horizon on the right of
the picture is quite remarkable.

Very characteristic of much of Fragiacomo's art
is the importance given to the foreground. To
secure this the horizon is placed high, so that
the picture seems to have been painted from
above the level of the ground; and very little sky
is shown, the picture being cut sharp off at a short
distance above the horizon. Evidently this is no
mere mannerism; it is an artifice for communi-
cating the more strongly to the spectator the
impression received by the painter. In the Pleni-
lunio, for instance, his impression of the light-path
leading mysteriously up the shoaling greys and
grey-greens of the midnight sea is made tenfold
stronger by the small amount of sky, and the

'tristezza" from a painting by pietro fragiacomo

4