Francesco Guardi - Buy or sell works
Venedig 1712-1793
Francesco Guardi is considered the last great master of Venetian view painting. He spent his entire working life in Venice engaged in genre and landscape painting and portraiture, coming to view painting only later in life, around the mid 1750s, in response to the demand of the international market.
Guardi developed a new, entirely original, almost impressionistic pictorial language of his own which differed significantly from precision of a Canaletto view-painting. The artist employs a freehand technique known as pittura di tocco (painting of touch) to create a sophisticated play of light and shadow on the painted facades, cupolas and towers, along with dynamic gestural brushstrokes for the sky and the glittering reflections in the water of the lagoon. His figures are loosely modelled, fashioned only by brushed patches of colour, without outline or real definition.
Guardi's distinctive approach, the atmospheric light and his improvisational figures would later culminate in the work of such artists as William Turner, Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet who travelled to Venice and echoed the innovations of the Venetian painter.