It was in the late 1860s that he took up anecdotal genre painting with domestic interiors, which came to be his field of specialisation. While the artist’s participation in the Fine Arts Expositions at the Brera Academy of 1869 marked the beginning of his success with critics and collectors, his work subsequently declined into mechanical repetition of the same subjects. He was the director of the Workers’ School of Drawing in Reggio Emilia from 1882 to 1907 and the city’s first Socialist mayor from 1900 to 1902.
The Emilian painter Gaetano Chierici proposes in this canvas one of his usual images of laughing family life, as it appears in other works exhibited in the same room: The good stepmother , The ugly joke , The cobbler’s son and Childish games . The setting in the interior of a humble peasant kitchen, populated by children intent on their daily activities, is representative of that small world of happy images, far from any desire for social denunciation, constant in the genre painting of Chierici, also defined painter of micro-history.
The scene takes place around the hearth, the center of family life, next to which the children eat a simple plate of pasta and beans and carry out their daily tasks such as spinning wool, a typically female activity since prehistoric times. The objects described in the most minute details are typical of rural life together with the simple games of childhood: the cupboard, a rustic piece of furniture for storing food, the steelyard hanging on the wall, the life of “Il Pescatore Reggiano” which marks time of the peasants based on the alternation of the seasons, the oil lamp, the figurine of the soldier on the peeling wall.
Gaetano Chierici turned to an artistic career at a very young age by attending courses at the School of Fine Arts in Reggio Emilia and tackling training experiences at the academies of Modena, Florence and Bologna, from which he draws influences of a purist and Macchiaiolo character that characterize his youthful production. Returning to permanently reside in his hometown from 1866, he turns to the themes of genre painting, with a preference for scenes of peasant life captured in rustic interiors, interpreted through an intimate sentimental adhesion and a clear formal realism. His subjects, often replicated with minimal variations, met the appreciation of the public in national and international exhibitions (Vienna, Munich, Berlin) for thirty years.
From 1882 to 1907 he directed the Reggio Emilia School of Drawing;
Thus the painter in 1899 justified the choices of his subjects: “If, despite my sixty years, I am still vigorous and robust, if I have been able to overcome the vicissitudes and bitter bitterness, which unfortunately were not spared in the course of my existence , I owe it to this art that takes place in the serene environment of my studio, where the voices and laughter of the protagonists of my paintings echo for many hours of the day. This is why my art has always been and still is locked up in the humble field of the family ”. (BG DIAZ, Contemporary artists: Gaetano Chierici, in “Emporium”, vol. X, n. 58, October 1899, p. 248)
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
Gaetano Chierici Painting
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