Signed and dated lower right: A. la Volpe 83
Provenance:
Private collection, Cologne
Taormina is a small town on the east coast of the island of Sicily, in the Province of Messina. Settled on a hill of the Monte Tauro, Taormina dominates two grand, sweeping bays and to the southern side, one can see the top of Mt. Etna, often capped with snow. The site of the old town is approximately 1000 ft. above sea level, whilst the Saracen castle there, built at the top of a vertiginous rock is believed to be the site of the ancient Arx, or citadel, alluded to by ancient writers.
The ancient theatre (the teatro greco, or “Greek Theatre”), is one of the most celebrated ruins in Sicily, due to its remarkable preservation, and a place of outstanding beauty. The theatre is built mostly of brick, which would suggest it to be a Roman construction, although the plan and proportions are identical to Greek standards, leading archeologists to believe that the present structure was rebuilt upon the foundation of an earlier Greek theatre. This theatre is the second largest, original Hellenic designed theatre, of its kind in Sicily (after that of Syracuse) and is today frequently used for operatic and theatrical performances.
In the19th century, Taormina became a popular tourist resort for certain Europeans of note, including Oscar Wilde, Nicholas I of Russia, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nietzsche (who wrote his Also sprach Zarathustra there), Richard Wagner and others. In 1927, the young Islandic writer, Halldor Laxness wrote his first major novel Verfarinn mikli fra Kasmir (The Great Weaver of Kashmir), in Taormina, for which he won the Nobel prize in 1955. Also, throughout this time, many other American and European painters, such as Otto Geleng (German, 1843-1939) and William Stanley Haseltine (American, 1835-1900) journeyed there to paint. In the late 19th century, Taormina gained further prominence as the place where the German photographer, Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931) worked most of his life.
A landscape painter, who turned his focus primarily to Italian sites and monuments, Alessandro La Volpe was a master at capturing the brilliant light and dry climate of his native Italy. Born in Lucera in 1819, he was the son of an employee of the Real Collegio. After finishing his studies La Volpe moved to Naples and entered Accademia delle Belle Arti, where he studied with Salvatore Fergola (1799-1874), the official painter of ceremonies of the French Monarchy at Naples. La Volpe began exhibiting in Naples in 1848. In 1850 he was sent to Sicily and Egypt on an official mission with the Prince of Lichtenberg to record important monuments; the assignment of such a mission revealing an appreciation for La Volpe’s meticulous attention to detail, as well as his skill as an accomplished painter.
Upon his return to Italy, La Volpe moved to Florence, where he helped to found the Scuola di Staggia, a school of Romantic landscape painters. Sketching en plein air in the 1850s and 1860s, his work was characterized by a tendency to depict identifiable, usually picturesque locales in the Tuscan countryside, while focusing on specific peculiarities and everyday aspects, and this was informally termed the Scuola di Staggia. The name Staggia is derived from a village in the hilly region near Sienna where the Hungarian artist, Károly Markó, first painted in 1853, later joined in about 1854-55 by his sons Károly Markó II and András Markó and other artists from Florence and Naples, stimulating an exchange of ideas between the artists of the Neapolitan school and their Tuscan colleagues; a significant step in the development of landscape painting in Italy in the latter part of the 19th century.
The Scuola di Staggia is significant for having been one of the earliest instances in Tuscany of a group of artists painting together from nature, a practice that greatly influenced the Macchiaioli circle of artists. The birth of the Scuola di Staggia put the artists of Tuscany in concert with their mid-century contemporaries in Paris and America.
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