Abbrutimento (Ricordo di Costantinopoli)

Etching (mm 229x174; sheet: mm 335x292), monogrammed on the plate at lower left. Exemplar of the second state of two, printed by Carlo Lovera and published in L'Arte in Italia - November 1870.

Very good impression. Large margins, excellent conservation. 

Alberto Pasini was born in Busseto and attended the Academy at Parma. From 1851 to 1853 he studied under Eugène Ciceri (1803-1886) in Paris, where he completed his training in the atelier of M.E. Isabey (1813-1890). He made his Salon debut in 1853. From his first visit to Persia in 1855, as part of the suite of the French delegation to the Persian Gulf and Tehran, Pasini specialized in views of remote corners of Turkey and Persia. He travelled to Constantinople between 1868 and 1869 and to Asia Minor and Syria in 1873. Pasini was also a seasoned traveller within Europe and from 1878 visited Venice on several occasions, and made a journey to Spain with Gérôme from 1879 to 1883.

"Principally a landscape and architectural painter, Pasini came under the influence of Théodore Rousseau and Fromentin in the late 1850s, though his later style reveals affinities with the Néo-grec school of painters. Apart from his Orientalist work, he painted some genre scenes and subjects taken from Turkish history and was also known for his lithographic work. 

"After the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), Pasini returned to Italy, but continued to exhibit at the Salon until his death in 1899” (MaryAnne Stevens, ed., The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse - The Allure of North Africa and the Near East, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1984, p. 195).

References: G. Giubbini, L’acquaforte originale in Piemonte e in Liguria 1860 - 1875, Genova 1976, n.1.