Pio Joris (1843–1921) - Tre Vogatori

Pius Joris (1843-1921)

Study of 3 rowers with beards

Pencil drawing on light blue watermarked paper with PM watermark

Late 19th century, early 20th century

Signed top right: P. Joris

On the back, numeral in pencil: N 1302

The external face of the rear closing cardboard contains a remnant of a paper collection label with the numeral of which the digits 514 can be read

With frame with brass plate bearing the name of the master: P. Joris 1843 - 1921

Sheet dimensions: 57. 5x42. 7 cm

Dimensions with frame: 62. 2x46. 9 cm

The drawing is in good condition: on the back, it has a small restoration made by placing a small piece of yellow paper to consolidate a small cut of approximately 3 cm in the right side margin, at the top, under the signature; browning of the paper (see photos)

Pio Joris (Rome, 8 June 1843 – Rome, 6 March 1921) was an Italian painter, engraver and watercolourist, belonging to the circle of Roman followers of Mariano Fortuny, known for a style characterized by the mixture of genuine realism and pleasantness of touch, sparkling and lively.

A painter known for his fundamentally commercial tendency, he was nevertheless considered one of the greatest painters in late nineteenth-century Rome. He participated in the main Italian and international exhibitions, often winning first prizes and sometimes obtaining indisputable successes (Munich Exhibition, 1869; Vienna Exhibition, 1873; Parisian exhibitions; International Exhibition of Rome, 1883 and 1911; Universal Exhibition of Paris, 1878 and 1900 , just to mention the main ones) . The themes most frequently discussed were those of Roman folklore, painted in a captivating way and which found favor with the nascent bourgeoisie; in any case he also worked on paintings of historical subjects such as The Flight of Pope Eugene IV from the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

Between Rome and Naples
Pio Joris's first pictorial activity stands as a meeting point of the Roman and Neapolitan pictorial culture of the second half of the nineteenth century. Roman by birth and academic training, Joris has always received stimuli from the Neapolitan artistic world: Edoardo Pastina, a landscape painter originally from Naples, was his first teacher, while at the National Exhibition in Florence in 1861 it was precisely the Neapolitans who gave to the painter the greatest stimuli to start studying painting again, dedicating himself totally to life. He was a pupil of Achille Vertunni with whom he made a trip to Sorrento and Naples during which he was able to personally meet Filippo Palizzi and Domenico Morelli and come into contact with the Resìna School which led the painter to the creation of a personal style based on the suggestions received. Joris, however, was always linked to the southern artistic world: we must keep in mind the ideas he took, in his mature age, from the painting of Francesco Paolo Michetti. He was a close friend of the painter Attilio Simonetti.

The friendship with Mariano Fortuny
The figure of Pio Joris has often been compared to Mariano Fortuny, of whom the Roman painter was a friend and admirer, often in a derogatory manner. Behind all this, there is the tendency of critics to focus on Fortuny's commercial painting, neglecting what were instead the Catalan's experiments, aimed at searching for a new naturalism not far from the results that were being achieved in same period in the rest of Europe. A new reading of Fortuny's work recently proposed by critics, far from the stereotypes that have accompanied it for more than a century, also leads us to evaluate the effects they had on Joris in a different way. Certainly the contact with Fortuny brought the artist a tendency to adopt a lively and virtuous brushstroke and at the same time gave a brighter and brighter chromaticism. In fact, the painter from Reus was entirely concentrated on the search for a bright luminosity, painting on white preparation and with darting brushstrokes to create luministic effects, arising from his reflection on the Spanish masters of the past and at the same time on the suggestions that in those years came from Japan . Joris, better than any other Roman painter, was able to grasp the novelties of Fortuny, not stopping at the superficial data, but updating, during the seventies, his painting to the new chromatic and naturalistic values, moreover considering that Joris and Fortuny they will spend time together in Spain painting, in a stay full of consequences for the Roman painter. In the same years, following the Catalan's stay in 1874, shortly before his death, a new reflection on the way of painting took place in Portici and which has its most complete example in the "Procession of Corpus Domini in Chieti" (Private Collection) by Francesco Paolo Michetti from 1877. "After the blessing" (Private collection) , won Joris a gold medal and a thousand lire at the Naples Exhibition of 1877 and catapulted the painter among the main Italian painters of the Seventies, those who, starting from Fortunyan's intuitions, created the "Empire of White", as proposed by the Apulian painter and critic Francesco Netti, where light painting takes shape with a lightening of the palette, flat colors and a white background.

The relationship with the Maison Goupil and Paris
Mariano Fortuny was probably the intermediary between Joris and the art dealer Adolphe Goupil, to whom the Roman painter would have been linked from 1868 to 1875. In Italy, Goupil was looking for small paintings with anecdotes taken from Lazio and Campania folklore immersed in naturalistic settings and bright, themes covered extensively by the Roman painter. This engagement inevitably led Joris to a success that went beyond Italy, evidenced by his frequent participation in the Parisian Salons - in which genre painting increasingly triumphed - which had now become showcases for wealthy buyers. But Joris's Parisian stays were more stimulating, in the Seventies, due to the contacts that the Roman artist had with De Nittis and Zandomeneghi, who brought him into contact with the impressionist world from which he took suggestions that he adapted to his own interests.

Joris in the Roman context
Joris was one of the best-known artists on the Roman artistic and cultural scene, from the seventies until his death; he was among the first exponents of the International Artistic Association, among the ten founders of the Association of Roman Watercolorists, he participated almost every year in the exhibitions of Amateurs and Connoisseurs of Fine Arts, but remained a stranger to the cultural circles born within Symbolism. He was much loved due to his outgoing and friendly character, well-liked by his colleagues and contemporary critics. The figure of Pio Joris was among the most central and important in the panorama of nineteenth-century Roman painting, in particular within the experience of landscape painting, with paintings pulsating with light and atmosphere linked mainly to luministic and chiaroscuro interests, to the relationship with reality and with nature also in the light of the European updating achieved through Fortuny and the Parisian experiences. His notebooks demonstrate that throughout his artistic career he was linked to the countryside and Rome (with Ettore Roesler Franz, he was the painter of the corners of Rome that were disappearing under the new districts of the capital) paying particular attention to compositional cuts and atmospheric rendering. Although he was a very fruitful artist, the works in museums and on the antiques market are limited; However, he remains an artist often present at major Italian auctions with valuations ranging from 500 to 50,000 euros. The interest in light is the constant in Joris' painting: The Terrace (Rome, Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna) is undeniably his youthful masterpiece in which light is the sole protagonist. In the 1990s his works were influenced by Micheletti's ideas for themes linked to religious rites, processions and church interiors. In these works the luminous vibrations almost disintegrate the figures, as in Holy Thursday (Rome, Galleria dell'Accademia di San Luca) considered by contemporary critics as his masterpiece.

The main works
Procession at the Aracoeli, ca. 1870. (Cariplo Foundation) .
Walk of Pius IX to the Pincio, 1864, Rome, Museum of Rome.
The Terrace, 1866, Rome, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art.
View of the Tiber with the Temple of Vesta, 1866-1867, Rome, Museum of Rome.
The Via Flaminia, a Sunday morning, 1869, location unknown, (winner of the Gold Medal at the Munich Exhibition of 1869) .
Women at the washhouse, 1868-70, Private property.
After the blessing, 1877, Private property, (Naples International Art Exhibition) .
The escape of Pope Eugene IV, 1883, Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art (International Exhibition of Rome, 1883) .
Priests in procession in a Roman church, 1899, Trento, M. A. R. T.
Holy Thursday, 1900, Rome, Galleria dell'Accademia di San Luca, (awarded at the Universal Exposition of Paris, 1900) .
The procession of the Manmanted in St. Peter's, 1900, location unknown, (awarded at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, 1900) .
Market in Campo de Fiori, 1908, Milan, Gallery of Modern Art.