Angelo Morbelli

The Italian Divisionists who got their name after their particular technique of using the division of colors through personalized brushstrokes became active during the 1890s and early 1900s.²³⁴ One of the first generation of the Divisionist painters was Angelo Morbelli from Alessandria who did many paintings on subjects of laborers and the lives of the poor.

Not only the subject matter but also the artistic approach of Caillebotte’s paintings, especially The Floor Scrapers (fig. 1), evidently made a huge impression on Morbelli. A series of works executed after his trip to Paris in 1889 show evident

229 The biographies from Oxford Art online at

http://0-www.oxfordartonline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/.

230 Belinda Thomson, Impressionism: origins, practice, reception, New York 2000, p. 20.

231 Norma Broude, The Macchiaioli: Italian painters of the nineteenth century, New Haven 1987, pp.

269-270.

232 Arduino Colasanti, “Mario de Maria,” in: Enciclopedia Italiana, 1931, available online at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/mario-de-maria_(Enciclopedia_Italiana)/.

233 Rossella Canuti, “Morbelli, Angelo,” in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 76, Rome 2012, available online at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/angelo-morbelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/.

234 Simonetta Fraquelli, Radical light: Italy’s divisionist painters 1891-1910, London 2008, p. 11.

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analogies to Caillebotte’s works. It is not clear on what occasion Morbelli has seen the painting in Paris. The parallels, however, are so striking that it can be taken for

granted that he had the opportunity to closely study Caillebotte’s work during his stay in the French capital. Sold at an auction in 1877 organized by the Impressionists at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, The Floor Scrapers was bought back by Caillebotte and kept in his hand until his death in 1894.²³⁵ Morbelli, however, could still have the

opportunity to get to know Caillebotte’s work; he could have been a guest in Caillebotte’s studio.

Between 1867 and 1876, Angelo Morbelli had studied at the renowned Brera Academy in Milan under Giuseppe Bertini (1825–98), Raffaele Casnedi (1822–92) and Luigi Riccardi (1808–77). Early in his career, he won prizes for his works.²³⁶ As an enthusiastic reader, Morbelli was equally inspired by the works of Italian Realists such as Giovanni Verga (1840–1922) and Luigi Capuana (1839–1915) as well as by contemporary French literature such as the works of É mile Zola, Gustave Flaubert (1821–80), Guy de Maupassant (1850–93) and Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850).²³⁷ His extensive reading and his life-long friendship with the painter Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868–1907) influenced him with socialist views which can be seen in his attention to the underprivileged sections of the population portrayed in his

paintings.²³⁸

Starting from 1883, Morbelli painted a cycle of more than six canvases which he called The Poem of Old Age (figs. 4, 14–18).²³⁹ All these works were painted at

235 Marie Berhaut, Gustave Caillebotte: catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels, Paris 1994, p. 76.

236 Rossella Canuti, “Morbelli, Angelo,” in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 76, Rome 2012, available online at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/angelo-morbelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/.

237 Ibid.

238 Ibid.

239 Lara Pucci, “Notes on Artists and Paintings,” in: Radical light: Italy’s divisionist painters 1891-1910, London 2008, p. 150.

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the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, the famous home for the elderly and the poor in Milan.²⁴⁰ The series of The poem of Old Age include: Last Days! of 1883 (fig. 14), Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio in Milan of 1892 (fig. 4), I remember when I was a girl (Mi riccordo quand’ero fanciulla) of 1903 (Tortona, private collection; fig. 15),²⁴¹ Christmas of the Left Behind (Il Natale dei rimasti) of 1903 (Venice, Ca’ Pesaro, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna; fig. 16),²⁴² A Christmas! at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio (Un Natale! al Pio Albergo Trivulzio) of 1909 (Turin, Galleria Civica D’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea; fig. 17),²⁴³ and The Refectory of the Old People (Il refettorio dei vecchioni) of 1919 (private collection; fig. 18).²⁴⁴ The recurring theme in these canvases is the desolate situation of the impoverished old people of his time. The men and women at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio are depicted praying, having meals or just sitting on long benches in the immense, scarcely furnished halls of the institution. Morbelli’s pessimistic viewpoint is not only expressed by the paintings’ subjects and the way they are depicted, but also by the carefully chosen titles which are often full of sarcasm. This can be seen in Last Days! and A Christmas!

at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio when exclamation marks are used in the titles to

emphasise further Morbelli’s social criticism. Although the six paintings differ in their content as well as in their composition, every canvas shares a common feeling of melancholy and loneliness. A gloomy atmosphere surrounds the elderly in need who assemble at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio; the painter focuses on infirmity and

240 He installed a small studio there for some time; ibid.

241 Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona, private collection, 1903, oil on canvas, 71 x 110.5 cm;

Aurora Scotti Tosini et al., Angelo Morbelli: tra realismo e divisionismo, exhibition catalog, Turin 2001, Turin 2001, p. 84.

242 Venice, Ca’ Pesaro, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, oil on canvas, 62 x 110.5 cm; Aurora Scotti Tosini, Angelo Morbelli, Soncino 1991, p. 86.

243 Turin, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, oil on canvas, 99 x 173.5 cm; Aurora Scotti Tosini et al., Angelo Morbelli: tra realismo e divisionismo, exhibition catalog, Turin 2001, Turin 2001, p. 83.

244 Milan, Civiche Raccolte Storiche, Museo di Milano, oil on canvas, 43 x 55 cm; Aurora Scotti Tosini et al., Angelo Morbelli: tra realismo e divisionismo, exhibition catalog, Turin 2001, Turin 2001, p. 91.

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inactiveness from their facial expression and posture, thus making the hopeless situation at the end of their lives tangible to the viewers.

Morbelli’s first painting was Last Days! finished in 1883 (fig. 14); this work not only won him the Premio Fumagalli at the Brera Academy,²⁴⁵ but, more importantly, a gold medal at the Universal Exposition of 1889 which was held from 6 May to 31 October 1889 in Paris.²⁴⁶ Last Days! shows a wide room crowded with uncounted men sitting closely side by side on austere ranks of benches, all wearing uniform dark garments and most of them black caps. Depicted from a diagonal point of view, the dimensions of these figures are gradually diminishing towards the background. The painter, thus, emphasises the large number of people. In a similar way, he stresses the wideness and ascetic character of the room with its vast ochre walls and high beamed ceiling. A round-arched door in the right foreground, a small entrance in the back, and two transom windows are the only openings. A small heater at the rear wall indicates that the immense room must have been rather cold. The bleak atmosphere is also emphasized by the two simple lamps hanging from the ceiling which are certainly not suitable to light the room sufficiently. These physical aspects of the environment indicate a sense of despair and hopelessness. Forcefully, Morbelli makes the viewer feel the gloomy atmosphere of the scenery. Albeit sitting closely next to each other, the men are shown in absolute isolation, immersed in their solitude. The elderly have no interactions with each other. Most of them are sitting with their heads bowed; a few of them are holding their heads with one of their hands; one of them rests his head on the desk for a little doze. Neither delight nor cheerfulness could be seen from the facial expression of these old men; their melancholic presence makes the mood in the room even more mournful and dispirited.

245 Rossella Canuti, “Morbelli, Angelo,” in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 76, Rome 2012, available online at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/angelo-morbelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/.

246 Ibid.

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In the second work of the series – Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio in Milan (fig. 4) executed in 1892, the air of solitude and desperation is even more intense. The painting was also exhibited at the Universal Exposition in Paris, this time in the year 1900.²⁴⁷ After Morbelli’s first visit to Paris in 1889, a radical change is introduced in the subsequent canvas. As both paintings depict the same environment and situation, the difference between the versions of 1883 and 1892, as I will demonstrate, becomes even more evident.

Different from the first version of 1883, the hall in Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio (fig. 4) is now nearly empty. Only three old men and one partially appearing figure at the left border of the painting are present during the feast days. This time Morbelli has made the composition clearer and simpler, putting more emphasis on the single figures and the patterns of the furnishing in the room such as the benches and the windows. In the series of The Poem of Old Age, Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio is the first work where the artist applies the method of making repetitive patterns in the scene. Patterns in Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio are mainly composed of firm and parallel lines, which outline the surfaces of the bench tables, and thus help to stress the effect of perspective. Surprisingly, the way of applying parallel lines in Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio is very similar to the arrangement of floor strips in Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers (fig. 1). Caillebotte’s floor strips are comparable to the lines of empty benches in Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio, as both of them put the accent on the perspective. The parallel arrangement of the benches also helps to lead the viewer’s eye toward the off-center vanishing point on the left background beyond the canvas. With the possibility of having been inspired by Caillebotte’s Floor

Scrapers, Morbelli was much impressed by the perspective with an off-center

247 William Walton, Victor Champier and André Saglio, Exposition universelle 1900: the chefs-d’œuvre, Philadelphia 1990, p. 20.

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vanishing point, and he also used parallel lines to accentuate the sharp effect of perspective. What’s more, Morbelli learned the unusual way of cropping images from Caillebotte’s works. Comparable to the slightly fragmented cutting of one corner of the room in Floor Scrapers, the composition of Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio is applied with the cutting of the ceiling, the edges of the walls and one figure with only his hands and one leg appeared in the picture plane. Morbelli’s Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio and Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers share the approach of applying photographic “zoom-in” effect in the composition.

Evidently, Morbelli appears to be a painter of social criticism.²⁴⁸ The paintings in The Poem of Old Age series show his close attention to the poor and the aged. From the first version of 1883 to the second version of 1892, Morbelli’s attitude of treating the protagonists has slightly changed. The anonymity of the men in the Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio (fig. 4) is much more emphasized as their facial expressions are nearly invisible. The old man in the far right background is dozing with one of his hand holding his head; the one in the far left background is staring at the empty table with his eyes lowered; the one in the foreground is resting his head on the desk for a nap. On the left, the frame of the picture shows legs and hands of a man who has placed his cane, coat and hat on the table in front of him. This man is more likely a temporary visitor who is looking at these three old men sitting alone and pessimistically on the benches. Impressively, Morbelli draws out the symbolic and emotional implications of the loneliness and helplessness of the elderly. By contrast, Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers (fig. 1) is devoid of any criticism towards social hierarchy and injustice depicted in Morbelli’s works. It is the vigour and physical movement of the workers that has been highlighted in Floor Scrapers. Unlike

248 Linda Schädler, “Notes on Artists and Paintings,” in: Radical light: Italy’s divisionist painters 1891-1910, London 2008, p. 149.

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Morbelli, Caillebotte appears to have no intention to focus on the social issues of the ordinary people. Considering his own wealthy background, Caillebote’s attitude towards the living conditions of the workers seems to be more naïve and even more indifferent than Morbelli’s attitude.

Parallel features between the Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio (fig. 4) and The Floor Scrapers (fig. 1) are not only represented in the treatment of perspective and cropping, but are also manifest in the artists’ interest in depicting light effects.

Comparable to Caillebotte’s delicate depiction of the light reflections on the wooden floor and the skin surface of the workers’ backs and arms, Morbelli, in Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio, also puts emphasis on the reflections of light on different surfaces such as the walls, the glass window and the wooden benches. In this aspect, both Morbelli and Caillebotte pay much attention to illustrate the material quality of things. Instead of using the rigid Divisionism points, Morbelli paints Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio with extensive brushstrokes, which is closer to the way Caillebotte uses his brushes in The Floor Scrapers.

As in Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio (fig. 4), loneliness and desperation of the poor old people are further developed in a painting entitled A Christmas! at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio (fig. 17) executed in 1909. Compared to the Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio of 1892, the atmosphere in A Christmas! at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio is even more lonesome, as there are only two protagonists present at one corner of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio. A similar composition which appears in the 1892 version (Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio) is also applied in this canvas: an

off-center vanishing point is led by the parallel rows of empty benches. In A

Christmas! at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio as well as Feast Day at the Hospice Trivulzio, Morbelli’s handling of perspective is not as plunging as in Caillebotte’s Floor

Scrapers (fig. 1). The degree in which the floor is tilted is smaller in Morbelli’s

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painting of the elderly at Pio Albergo Trivulzio. Caillebotte uses the floor strips, while Morbelli chooses the parallel benches as an accent on the perspective which is titled upward. In addition to the use of perspective, Morbelli’s color scheme is to some extent similar to that in Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers. The tones in A Christmas! at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio and Floor Scrapers are dominated by retrained colors such as brown, beige and ocher. However, both Morbelli and Caillebotte add some light to their works. A wide glistening space in Floor Scrapers is highlighted with

umber-based golden colors in numerous places: the reflections on the workers’ bare upper bodies, their faces, their tools, the wooden floor, the bottle on the ground and the backlight from the window. On the other hand, Morbelli lets the room glimmers with a beam of light from an unseen window. Light source in the room in A Christmas!

at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio is small and narrow, which only shed light on one row of the benches. The rest of the room remains in shadows. In short, the visual quality in Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers is more glittering than that in Morbelli’s A Christmas! at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio.

Painted in 1887 and 1889, two versions of Milan Central Station (La Stazione Centrale di Milano; figs. 73, 74)²⁴⁹ are Morbelli’s rare representations of an urban scenery which depict the old Milan Central Station constructed in 1864.²⁵⁰ The two versions are rendered from a nearly identical angle as if they are two “successive snapshots” of the same scene.²⁵¹ Compared to the first version, the second version’s composition is much more cropped as the locomotive on the right foreground is cropped more by the frame. The second version was painted in 1889, the year when

249 Milan Central Station (Alla Stazione Centrale di Milano), 1887, oil on cavnas, 86 x 132 cm, Ente Autonomo Ferrovie dello Stato, Rome; Milan Central Station in 1889 (La Stazione Centrale di Milano nel 1889), 1889, oil on cavnas, 57.5 x 100 cm, Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan.

250 The current station was inaugurated in 1931, in order to replace the old central station built in 1864.

Script Edizioni, Milan, Bologna 2012, p. 8.

251 Aurora Scotti Tosini, Angelo Morbelli, Soncino 1991, p. 62.

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Morbelli paid a visit to the Universal Exposition in Paris.²⁵² Morbelli could have seen Impressionist paintings in Paris and learned the way in which the motifs are cropped such as Caillebotte’s characteristic cropping of the figures in Paris Street; Rainy Day (fig. 3). Furthermore, in Morbelli’s Milan Central Station, the emphasized perspective achieved by the converging lines of the rail tracks is evocative of the striped floor in Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers (fig. 1).

Italian scholars (i.e. Aurora Scotti Tosini) often compare Morbelli’s Milan Central Station with Claude Monet’s series of Gare Saint-Lazare (figs. 45, 75) in terms of their similar compositions and illustrations of the smoky vapor.²⁵³ In fact, Morbelli places more emphasis on the atmospheric light and renders it in a smoothly painted surface,²⁵⁴ whereas Monet appears fascinated with the “changing effects of the cloud of steam”²⁵⁵ and interprets steams with rough brushstrokes. In my opinion, Morbelli’s more smoothly finished surfaces are closer to Caillebotte’s works between 1875 and 1877. It is the stress on clear vanishing lines, especially evident in the railroad tracks and platform’s borders leading into the pictures’ depths in Milan Central Station, which demonstrates the extent to which Morbelli has been influenced by Caillebotte’s compositional style.

In short, the major similarities between the Divisionist painter Morbelli’s works discussed above and Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers (fig. 1) are their compositions (i.e.

empty space) and the artistic qualities (i.e. smoothly painted surfaces, depictions of light effects).

252 Linda Schädler, “Notes on Artists and Paintings,” in: Radical light: Italy’s divisionist painters 1891-1910, London 2008, p. 149.

253 Aurora Scotti Tosini, Angelo Morbelli, Soncino 1991, p. 62.

254 Monica Vinardi, “Schede,” in: Aurora Scotti Tosini, et al., Angelo Morbelli: tra realismo e divisionismo, exhibition catalog, Turin 2001, Turin 2001, p. 138.

255 Notice de l’œuvre from Musée d’Orsay at

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/la-gare-saint-lazare-7080.html?no_cache=1.

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