Antonio Fontanesi (Italian, 1818-1882)

Antonio Fontanesi was to landscape painting in Italy what Camille Corot was to France - an artist who developed an increasingly poetic vision of nature after having spent much of his youth painting en plein air studying the effects of light and colour.

The present work belongs to the series of atmospheric late works, in which Fontanesi focussed on the effects of twilight in woodland landscapes, paintings which, in addition to Corot, also derived their influence from artists such as Claude (whom he encouraged his students to emulate), and also from Turner, whose work he had seen in London.