Art Of The Day Weekly

#407 - from 19 November 2015 to 25 November 2015


Louis-François Cassas, View of the City and Port of Trieste, ink and watercolour, 24,6 x 40,6 cm. © London, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Cassas, mad about Italy

TOURS - Among the numerous artists who carried out their “Grand Tour” to Italy, we have Poussin, Lorrain, Fragonard, Géricault, Ingres, Corot, Viollet-le-Duc… But very few people think of Louis-François Cassas (1756-1827). In spite of his current deficit in popularity (partly due to his status of simple drawer), he was a remarkable traveller, spending a total of ten years in Italy. During his first stay (1778-1783), he went from Rome to Naples (where he witnessed an eruption of the Vesuvius), from Trieste to Sicily. During the second trip (1787-1792), coming from Turkey where he accompanied count Choiseul-Gouffier, the ambassador to Constantinople, he settled in Rome, where he married a local girl. His watercolours, though topographic, showed various atmospheres (monuments, landscapes), his participation to the Voyage pittoresque of the abbot of Saint-Non, the admiration from amateurs such as Goethe made of him a celebrity in his time. His reputation continues to grow, and some fifty of his sheets recently found in the English collection of Marquis of Bristol will represent half of the works shown.
Voyages en Italie de Louis-François Cassas at the musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours, from 21 November 2015 to 22 February 2016.

Know more

Read the full Newsletter