The J. Paul Getty Museum has announced the acquisition of a major 19th-century landscape painting, “Spring in the Alps,” dated 1897, by Italian artist Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899). The painting was originally made for Jacob Stern, a San Francisco collector and director of Levi Strauss & Co. Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum states, “Giovanni Segantini was at the peak of his career when he created this luminous panoramic scene. Featuring his characteristic thick brushstrokes and brilliant color palette—which includes flecks of gold leaf—the painting is among the most extraordinary and captivating landscapes produced in Europe at the end of the 19th century. It will resonate powerfully alongside our great Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works from France and paintings by northern European artists of the era. Significantly, with this acquisition, ‘’Spring in the Alps’’ finds a permanent public home in California, its original destination, and we hope museum-goers from San Francisco, where it was on view for more than 70 years, will visit the painting at the Getty when they are in Los Angeles.” The painting measures more than four by seven feet and is, as described by the museum, “a monumental, sweeping depiction of an alpine landscape near the village of Soglio in Switzerland, with its recognizable church tower visible on the right side of the picture. The view is of an expansive plateau and valley ringed by glaciers and majestic snow-capped mountains. In the middle of the composition a farm woman dressed in a blue and red peasant costume characteristic of eastern Switzerland leads two large horses past a watering trough. They are coming from a freshly plowed field where a sower scatters seeds and a black and white dog stands guard. The scene is sunny and colorful, emphasizing a glorious vista with a brilliant blue sky and ribbons of clouds.” Describing the painting further, the senior curator of paintings at the Getty, Davide Gasparotto, said, “”Spring in the Alps” is a joyous hymn to the cycle of life and the reawakening of nature in spring after a long, hard winter. It is an extraordinarily accomplished work where symbolism and naturalism are inextricably intertwined. Panoramic in scale and astonishingly luminous, “Spring in the Alps” is one of the greatest paintings of the Italian Ottocento in America, an iconic work that expands our ability to tell the story of 19th-century European painting.”http://www.blouinartinfo.com/Founder: Louise Blouin
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