Franz Ludwig Catel
(Berlin 1778 - 1856 Rome)
La Dolce Vita
c.1820-30
Oil on canvas, laid down on board
16.4 x 22.8 cm
SOLD
Bearing a dedication on the verso dated 1944 Zur Vermählung die herzl. Glückwünsche / mit größter Hochachtung / von Arthur [Schack]/ Kattowitz / den 23. Februar 1944
The painter and draughtsman Franz Ludwig Catel was born in Berlin in 1778. He studied at the Berlin Academy and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He began his career as an illustrator for almanacs and books, producing illustrations for Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea in 1799 and Schiller's Don Carlos in 1811. He also exhibited landscape watercolours. He was appointed a member of the Berlin Academy in 1806. He spent four years in Paris and later travelled to Italy, arriving in Rome in 1811. In the following year he made his first visit to Naples and southern Italy. In 1814 he married Margherita Prunetti, daughter of the celebrated Roman poet Michelangelo Prunetti. She was his introduction to Roman society. At their home on the Piazza di Spagna the couple entertained a large multi-national circle of artists and patrons like Bertel Thorvaldsen, Sulpiz Boisserée, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Joseph Anton Koch and the Nazarene painters. His clients were drawn from many countries - the Duchess of Devonshire; Lady Mary Anne Acton; General Peter Davidoff, on behalf of the Russian Tsar; Count Alexander Michailovitch Galitzin; the American archaeologist John Izard Middleton; and Pierre-Louis-Jean-Casimir Duc de Blacas.
The major focus of Catel's oeuvre is on Italian vedute and genre subjects. He quickly emerged as one of the leading landscapists of his day and his work achieved wide-spread international recognition. In 1816-17 he worked with the Nazarene painters on a commission for a narrative fresco cycle in the Palazzo Zuccari - later known as the Casa Bartholdy - in Rome. His most prominent German patron was the Bavarian Crown Prince, Ludwig, a great friend of the arts. Catel depicted Ludwig surrounded by a group of German painters in the Osteria Ripa Grande in Rome in 1824.[1] Successful sales of his leicht verständliche Veduten, as Ludwig Richter puts it, enabled Catel to purchase an estate in the countryside north of Rome in 1830. It was here that he spent the summer months. In addition, he used his wealth to fund the Istituto Catel, a foundation for the education of the sons of artists.[2]
The idyllic subject of the present, exquisite painting reflects the yearning for a carefree life in harmony with nature - a notion familiar to every traveller on the Grand Tour experiencing Naples and its picturesque environs for the first time. To experience the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy between Rome and Naples at first hand marked the pinnacle of a successful Tour.[3]
Catel depicts a shady, vine-covered terrace set above an expansive, sun-drenched southern landscape. A young man plucks a tune on his mandolin while a girl, distracted from her spinning, sits spell-bound beside him. At the left, underlining nature's richness, is a still life of summer fruits. In a corner, certainly not coincidentally, stands an amphora of wine. The central focus is on the view of the Bay of Naples - as seen from Castellammare di Stabia - with Mount Vesuvius in the far distance, a plume of white smoke crowning its summit.
[1] Neue Pinakothek, Munich, inv. no. WAF 142, acquired from the artist in 1824.
[2] For details of Catel's biography see Stolzenburg, Andreas, Franz Ludwig Catel, exhib. cat., Casa di Goethe, Rome 2007; Elena di Majo, Franz Ludwig Catel e i suoi amici a Roma. Un album dei disegni dell'ottocento, exhib. cat., Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Rome 1997, p.71, fig. 119; Renato Mammucari, Ottocento romano, Rome 1997, p.465.
[3] Dieter Richter, Neapel, Biografie einer Stadt, Berlin 2005.