“Quickly, with large brushstrokes, in a matter of moments, he fills the panel with colour so that it already has all the appearance of a finished painting at a certain distance. [...]”

In the spring of 1886, as usual, Lorenzo Delleani left his studio in Turin, where he worked on the larger paintings during the winter, and went to paint en plein air outside the city and in the places dear to him, especially Pollone, where the family home also offered him a base for frequent excursions in the mountains of the province of Biella. Another haunt was the villa of the Vignola family at Morozzo in the province of Cuneo. Other visitors to the villa included the sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi and the painter Giovanni Giani, as well Delleani’s friend Giovanni Camerana (Casale Monferrato, Alessandria, 1845 - Turin, 1905), a judge and writer, who had accompanied him on a trip to Holland three years earlier and offered his constant encouragement and support in articles published in L’Arte in Italia and Gazzetta del Popolo, urging him as early as 1872 to abandon history painting for the study of nature in the open. 

In June 1886, on his return to Piedmont from a trip to Rome begun the previous month, Delleani visited Camerana, who was serving as chief prosecutor in Alba at the time. The artist’s brief stay there, long unknown until it was reconstructed by the art critic Angelo Dragone,¹ is documented by a series of medium-sized panels (37 x 25 cm, the standard format habitually used by Delleani from 1881 to the summer of 1886) with views of the town (Mercato ad Alba and Coro di San Lorenzo d’Alba) and of tranquil corners in the surrounding countryside, including Boschetto in riva a Tanaro presso Alba, In riva al fiume and Paesaggio albese. The small group of about a dozen panels identified and catalogued by Dragone, all of which are now in private collections, includes Alba, which bears a dedication to Camerana written with the brush handle on the still-wet paint together with the date of execution (22 June), attesting to the gifts of paintings and poems exchanged by the two friends. 

Characterised by intense luminosity and an evocative contrast of light - with the sun low in the sky behind the hill and the grey shadows of the trees stretching out over a meadow yellowed by the heat of summer - this small work displays Delleani’s keen observation and ability to capture the essentials of a landscape almost instantly in thick, rapid brushstrokes. A splendid description of his way of working is provided by his pupil Giuseppe Bozzalla: “Quickly, with large brushstrokes, in a matter of moments, he fills the panel with colour so that it already has all the appearance of a finished painting at a certain distance. He then continues the work with different brushes, strengthening certain tonalities with the palette knife and using a brush with pine marten bristles to delineate some outlines more clearly, before finally writing the day, month and year in the bottom right corner.”² The limited documentation on Cerruti’s purchases sheds no light on the work’s ownership after Camerana’s death in 1905 or when it actually entered his collection in Rivoli. Evidence that Alba was shown in the exhibition Paesisti piemontesi dell’800 at Acqui Terme (1995) is instead provided by the label on the back of the panel and by the catalogue edited by Dragone, whose introduction describes the work as an example of Delleani’s “anything but monotonous” sensibility and ability to “bend the subject to his rapacious eye […] as in the fiery effect of a sunset captured with a few patches of paint in the panel of June 1886 dedicated to his friend Giovanni Camerana”.³ 

Monica Tomiato

¹ Dragone A. 1973-74, vol. I, p. 332.

² Bozzalla 1933, quoted in Dragone A. 1973-74, vol. II, pp. 48-49.

³ A. Dragone, “Piemontesi d’Europa nell’Ottocento”, in Acqui Terme 1995, p. 11.