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an image of a painting of a group of people sitting under a treea painting of a wooden frame with a piece of paper taped around it
Wannenes Art Auctions

Estimate €400 - €600
Sale commission
Description
GUSTAVO SIMONI Rome, 1845 – Palestrina, 1926 Peasant Women at Work Signed ‘G Simoni, Rome’ in the bottom right-hand corner Watercolour on paper, 60.5 × 44.5 cm The presence of a watercolour by Gustavo Simoni within the Curtis Collection documents one of the lesser-known yet most significant chapters in Ralph Curtis’s artistic development. Trained at the Accademia di San Luca, Simoni was able to combine a solid academic tradition with a lively and modern pictorial language, influenced by the teachings of Mariano Fortuny. A restless spirit and tireless traveller, he spent time in France, Spain and North Africa; these experiences fuelled the Orientalist imagery that would make him one of the most highly regarded practitioners of the genre in Italy. In 1875, he was also one of the ten founders of the Society of Watercolourists of Rome, helping to establish watercolour as an independent medium of expression within the Italian art scene. It was with Simoni that the young Ralph Curtis studied during the family’s stay in Rome in January 1878. On that occasion, Daniel and Ariana Curtis rented the house of the sculptor Tito Malpieri and, as Daniel noted in his diaries, their son took private lessons with the artist, whom he described as ‘the finest painter of figures in watercolour in the whole of Rome’. This encounter left a profound mark on his artistic development, imparting to him not only a mastery of the watercolour technique – which was to become one of the preferred media of his output – but also a taste for the ethereal and refined atmospheres of nineteenth-century Orientalism. Simoni’s influence is evident in the numerous watercolours painted by Curtis during his travels, from the views of Tangier to the works created in Algeria and India. Painted during the years when Simoni was establishing his reputation, the watercolour presented here thus bears witness not only to the quality of one of the leading Italian masters of the medium, but also to the direct relationship between the artist and the Curtis family, offering a rare insight into the origins of Ralph’s pictorial language and the decisive role played by Simoni in his artistic development. Key bibliography: E. A. McCauley, A. Chong, R. Momoli Zorzi, R. Linger, *Gondola Days. Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle*, Boston 2004, p. 225 R. Mamoli Zorzi, An American Painter in Venice: Ralph W. Curtis and the Palazzo Barbaro, 2024, pp. 57–60, 194
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About the sale FROM THE CURTIS COLLECTIONS AT PALAZZO BARBARO: PAINTINGS, FURNITURE AND WORKS OF ART
Auction location
Auction time 09/29/2026 at 2:45 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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