Studio: international art (37.1906)

Angelo DaW Oca Bianco,

TECHNICAL HINTS FROM THE
DRAWINGS OF PAST MASTERS
OF PAINTING. VI. T. GAINS-
BOROUGH, R.A.

Our series of studies by great masters has
hitherto dealt exclusively with figure subjects. In
Gainsborough's Boy with a Cart we have a figure
painter's treatment of landscape. Although he
painted a few fine landscapes, yet Gainsborough is
so much more widely remembered by his portraits
that the former and more intimately personal work
runs the risk of being almost overlooked. He
appears to have made a vast number of studies in
many different media, principally for future use.
In selecting the Boy with a Cart from the Print
Room collection it seemed to us that the convention
used had been most happy in its choice, and, whilst
quite simple in working (consisting only of two
shades, one warm and one cool), yet capable of
great variety of suggestion. The subject appears
to have been sketched in outline with a quill or
reed pen in a warm brown colour, and afterwards
with broad washes of an almost neutral grey, the
light and shade and tone of the picture gradually
developed. The balance of warm tones as com-
pared with the cool shades seems most admirably
proportioned, and managed so as to suggest the
happy, lazy feeling of life in the country in the
late a'ternoon of a summer day.

NGELO DALL' OCA BIANCA.
BY ALFREDO MELANI.

It were impossible within the limits of

a short article to do more than epitomise the life
and the work of Dall' Oca Bianca, one of Italy's
most popular painters, and moreover one of the
most active leaders of the genre school, which has
had its periods of enthusiasm in that country, for
DalP Oca's first works were popular scenes ot
Verona, where he was born and received his
artistic education. At first he was regarded as a
sort of votary of the amiable Venetian, Favretto,
who enjoyed a fame in Italian painting akin to
that of Goldoni and Gallina in the domain of
dramatic literature. Those alone who know
Venetia, and particularly Venice, can understand
how much a painter may extract from that region
in regard to its every-day life, so rich in movement,
in humour, and in grace. And this explains why
several painters of our time fixed on their canvases
the life lived by these Venetians—humble folk,
whose mother wit, to say nothing of their pic-
turesque aspects, aroused an interest which we
should nowadays term " psychological," and was
assuredly most seductive.

DalP Oca, born and bred amid surroundings in
which colour was the patrimony of the greatest of
artists, was possessed while quite young of a strong
sense of light, and with his sunshine effects, which

' falling leaves ':
23O

by a. dall' oca bianca