Studio: international art (80.1920)

THE RECENT WORK OF ETTORE TITO

the South, its fecundity, its exuberance,
its love of colour and joy of life. 0 0

At thirteen he was in the Venice
Academy of Fine Arts, and up to seventeen
was studying under Molmenti. The anec-
dotal side of art was then in the mode ;
in the Venice Gallery of Modern Art we
may study its expression by Favretto.
But young Tito soon found his way out
of this convention of taste into the reality
and fascination of the actual life of the
Venice around him; and in the Pescheria
Vecchia, exhibited at Venice in 1887, and
at once acquired for the Gallery of Modern
Art in Rome, he made his definite claim to
his individual place and message in the
art of this new Italy. 0000

Venice—as Goethe said of Leipzig—
forms her own people ; few artists can
remain with her long without coming
under the spell of which Fragiacomo,

4

Miti-Zanetti, Beppe Ciardi, De Stefani,
Cesare Laurenti, and Ettore Tito, each
in his own way, are exponents. 0 0
Rafaello Barbiera, writing of Professor
Tito's individual show in the Venice
exhibition of 1912, said of his art, " His
painting of the Pescheria Vecchia, dating
from 1887, is one of those pages of popular
life which belong to history. For therein
is expressed the outdoor life, full of busy
movement, in an old market which is now
gone for ever, with its wonderfully pic-
turesque effects of types and colouring.
. . . Above all else he is the painter of
movement. In this peaceful Venice he
finds movement, and finds it yet again—
women, running children, advancing pro-
cessions, boatmen rowing, and the wind
in its onset, its playful sports with women's
clothing or linen hung out to dry in the
sun." This criticism seems to me absolutely