Ottocento. Catalogo dell’arte italiana dell’Ottocento, Milan 2001, vol. 30, p. 306
Angelo Morbelli is, together with Giovanni Segantini, Guiseppe Pellizza, Gaetano
Previati, Emilio Longoni and the critic and gallery owner Vittore Grubicy, one of the
six most important figures of Divisionism, a movement that flourished in northern
Italy at the same time as Pointillism in France. The term describes a painting
technique whereby separate strokes of different colors, placed next to one another,
blend in the eye of the observer into a single hue.



When Divisionism arose, Italian artists had little or no first-hand experience of
original works by Neo-Impressionists such as George Seurat, whom they knew mainly
from magazines – L’Art moderne, for example – which published articles by the art
critic Félix Fénéon, who coined the term Neo-Impressionism. Around 1887, Fénéon’s
ideas were seized upon by the critic, gallery owner and painter Vittore Grubicy, who
propagated Divisionism in Italy and supported it as a patron. The exhibition of works
by Morbelli, Longoni and Segantini at the Brera Triennale in Milan in 1891 first
brought the new movement to the attention of a wider public.



The divisionist revolt was not only about a new painting technique, however. By
showcasing social issues, it opened up a whole new world of subject matter. At the
turn of the century, Symbolism sparked the interest of Divisionists in landscape as an
autonomous motif.



Angelo Morbelli – the author of the present painting – studied at the Brera Academy
in Milan until 1876. Under contract to the Grubicy gallery since 1887, Morbelli visited
the world exhibition in Paris in 1889 and subsequently spent a short time in London.
In the following years, he devoted a great deal of time to developing the color
theories that were foundational to Divisionism. In addition to exploring the new
painting technique, he was particularly interested in painting materials and
experimented with manufacturing home-made oil paints and varnishes in order to
achieve the desired light effects.



Morbelli was the ‘most rigorous and most engaged champion of the new technique’.3
The focus of his later work was the landscape, particularly the mountainous
landscapes of northern and central Italy. Starting in 1895, he usually spent the
summer months in Santa Caterina Valfurva in Lombardy. He was interested in the
ever-changing perception of colors, depending on the weather and the time of day,
which is what induced him to paint a number of versions of a motif at different times
of the day and under various atmospheric conditions.

Our painting, dated 1907, is captivating not only because of its mood but also because
of the ingenious technique. The delicate dashes of color were meticulously applied in
pastose brushstrokes that form a fine meshwork. The contours are soft and the play
of color and gradations of light highly subtle.

The canvas depicts a mountain landscape at dusk. The foremost mountains, parallel
to the picture plane, are almost shrouded in darkness – only a bit of color is still
recognizable. Morbelli lets us imagine them through layers of dark glaze.
The mountain ridge that runs into the depths of the scene reflects the soft light still
remaining in the sky and bathes the side of the mountain in a warm reddish glow.
The contrast between the dark foreground and the bright middle distance lends the
picture its magical illusion of depth.