Fountain and Pergola in Italy

Ernest Christian Frederik Petzholdt · 1830–35

Medium

Oil on paper, mounted on canvas

Original size

39 × 50 cm (15 1/2 × 20 in.); Framed: 50.8 × 62.3 cm (20 × 24 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

Painted during the golden age of northern European artists decamping to Italy, this sunlit study captures the quiet grandeur of an Italian garden with an intimacy that larger, more formal works rarely achieve. Ernest Christian Frederik Petzholdt was a Danish painter who made the journey south in the early 1830s, joining a generation of Scandinavian and German artists drawn to Italy's particular quality of light. Working in oil on paper — a format favoured for plein air studies — he built up scenes with a directness and warmth that distinguished him from his more academic contemporaries. His Italian works have a freshness to them, a sense of having been observed rather than composed, which gives them their lasting appeal. Petzholdt died in 1838 at just thirty-three, leaving a body of work that remained relatively little-known outside Denmark for much of the following century; the Art Institute of Chicago now holds this piece as part of its European collection. The hand-painted oil reproduction follows the original's restrained palette and loose, confident brushwork, rendering the dappled light on stonework and the pergola's trailing foliage with the same warmth Petzholdt captured on location nearly two centuries ago.