Gaetano Chierici

(Italian, 1838-1920)

Una catastrophe

Footnotes

Provenance
Anon. sale, S. Kende, Vienna, 25 April 1921, lot 23.
Private collection, Germany.
Thence by descent.
Anon. sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 23 October 2019, lot 538.
Private collection, UK (acquired from the above).

Gaetano Chierici trained at The Reggio Emilia School of Fine Arts in 1850 and then moved to Florence in 1858 and enrolled at Academy's scuola del nudo. He had a natural flare for depicting the human form and this, combined with his narrative skill, often depicting children in humorous situations, led to a celebrated career as one of Italy's finest genre painters. 'Catastrophe' is typical of his work and, as with a number of his more important works, a subject that he painted on several occasions; this work being the earliest example, painted in 1887 and exhibited at Wiener Künstlerhaus in 1889. The scene is set in a humble cottage interior; a setting that the artist would remember well from his impoverished childhood. The cottage is bathed in a warm glow from the open fire, but the peace of the homely interior is shattered as a gaggle of geese force their way in, knocking the unfortunate child off the bench as a cat and kittens look on. The ensuing chaos of the moment is brilliantly captured with exquisite detail and shows the artist at his most accomplished and illustrates clearly why Chierici enjoyed an international reputation exhibiting widely not only in his native Italy, but in the United States and London.