A selection of master drawings 2016

15
Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Palmanova 1762 - 1844 Milan
Idyll with Spinner
Pen, brown ink, wash and black chalk on laid paper
179 x 254 mm (7 x 10 in.)
Iscriptions: signed bottom right in ink Bison; on the verso upper left corner in pencil Bison: Due Filatrici,
at the centre in pencil GB, bottom right corner in pencil 62.
Provenance: O. Basilio collection, Trieste; private collection, Trieste.
Exhibited: Cento disegni del Bison, exhibition catalogue by A. Rizzi, Udine, 1962.
The role of Drawing in the artistic journey of the Friuliborn
Giuseppe Bernardino Bison was fundamental over
the whole span of his long and prolific career. After
having studied the “elements of figure” with a pupil
of Tiepolo, Costantino Cedini, Bison applied himself
with particular interest to the study of perspective at
the Accademia in Venice. Ever since the first years of his
training, Bison pitched the first bases for his production
as an easel painter, decorator and vedutista and today
he is recognised as one of the greatest representatives of
Venetian vedutismo. It was thanks to his collaboration
with the architect Giannantonio Selva that Bison
worked in Ferrara in Palazzo Bottoni (1787), and then
in Treviso, in the Casino Soderini (1796). Finally he
moved to Trieste, where he spent thirty years of his life.
Here he obtained unprecedented success and decorated
some of the most prestigious private and public buildings
of the city, including the famous Teatro Nuovo 1 , without
ever neglecting his tireless production of easel works.
After a brief stay in Venice around 1800, Bison moved
to Trieste, working as a set designer. In his later life, he
visited Florence and Rome, which he depicted in some of
his most sticking painted city views. At the age of sixtynine
he finally moved to Milan, where he died in 1844.
Within Bison’s graphic oeuvre, it is hard to find a
preparatory drawing for a painting, whether this be a
veduta, a landscape, a countryside scene or a painting
with a mythological or sacred subject. Each invention
finds its origin in the creative force of the artist and is
born of the recomposition of fragments of his personal
visual memory, sometimes authentic acts of homage to
Tiepolo, both father and son, or to Francesco Guardi,
Canaletto, Marco Ricci and Francesco Zuccarelli.
Our drawing is an exquisite example of this aspect
of Bison’s graphic output, where his pen strokes are
immediate, his line pure, slight and delicate, and
where the brown wash imbues the composition with a
subtle painterly effect. Idyll with Spinner may thus be
considered a self-contained, finished work probably
intended for sale as an autonomous picture, and thus
signed for that reason. This masterpiece met the taste
of the times and even today has a bewitching quality
which succeeds in capturing the observer’s gaze. We
are looking at a «splendid drawing, worthy of Goya. The
energetically expressive realism, the product of a vigour at
once rhythmic and linear, critical and psychological, marks
a leap forward into the future in relation to iconographic
and aesthetic standards that were only just beginning to
take root in Italian culture. The graphic litany, purged of
its traditional dross, is wholly Romantic in feel». 2 That was
how Aldo Rizzi described our drawing in the exhibition
catalogue Cento Disegni del Bison (Udine, 1962), when
it was chosen for the poster advertising the exhibition
on the grounds that perfectly encapsulated the artist’s
imagination and creative talent.
1 Bison had already undertaken many commissions independently
before arriving in Trieste. For example the decorations for the
Teatro Nuovo and Degli Obizzi in Ferrara (around 1790) and
the many works in the Treviso region. Cf. F. Magani, Giuseppe
Bernardino Bison, Soncino (CR), 1993, pp. 9-12.
2 Cf. Cento disegni del Bison, exhibition catalogue by A. Rizzi,
Udine, 1962, p. 56.