Italian Peasant

1842

Paintings of figures in picturesque Italian costumes were very popular in nineteenth-century France. Decamps produced this image several years after returning from a stay in Rome during the mid-1830s. He emphasizes the coarseness of the rustic figure and setting through muted colors and textured surfaces, particularly visible in the thickly painted white plaster wall.

Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	15 5/8 x 12 1/2 in. (39.7 x 31.8 cm) Frame: 24 5/8 x 21 1/2 x 3 in. (62.5 x 54.6 x 7.6 cm)
Object Number	1955.702
Acquisition	Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status	Off View

Image Caption

Gabriel Alexandre Decamps, Italian Peasant, 1842, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.702

Select Bibliography

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Five: French Paintings of the 19th Century. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1956. Cass, David B. and Michael M. Floss. Alexandre Gabriel Decamps, 1803-1860. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Dewey F. Mosby. Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, 1803-1860, 2 vol.. Ph.D. diss. Harvard, 1973. New York: Garland.. 1977.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

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EUROPEAN PAINTINGS CATALOGUE ENTRY

Provenance

Émile Gaillard (by 1855–1904, his sale, Georges Petit, Paris, 7 June 1904, no. 10, ill., as Paysan italien, sold to Arnold and Tripp); [Arnold and Tripp, Paris, from 1904]; [Wildenstein, New York, sold to Clark, 1 Nov. 1944, as Le Voyageur]; Robert Sterling Clark (1944–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.