Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are offering for sale this oil on canvas by the Italian artist Raffaele Frigerio, who has signed the panting R. Frigerio in the upper left hand corner. The painting depicts a half length portrait of an old fisherman called Francesco Spadari lighting his long pipe. This man, known as Spadaro, became very famous and we will tell his story below.

Francesco Spadari, 1858-1937, made himself into a media personality who entertained tourists on Capri. Using the one-name fame system, he called himself 'Spadaro'. He hung out in the main piazzas of the island's dock area, posing for photos and cleverly creating a public persona of the rustic Italian rube. Images of him posing with pipes, boate, beaches etc., adorn tourist postcards from the late 1900s through the 1930s. He was photographed with famous visitors to Capri and even, in a widely publicised stunt, coached Russians Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Lenin on how to fish!

He was so famous, that 100 years later, in 2018, Neapolitans hosted a conference about him to commemorate his 'achievements', as an illiterate fisherman entrepreneur, who invented a job for himself in the then new, 20th Century tourism economy of the city.

Raffaele Frigerio was a student of the Naples Academy of Fine Arts and, as he has painted Spadaro many times, is believed to be Neapolitan. Other than this fact and his dates of 1875-1945 we have found little biographical information about him. He was a prolific artist and several hundred of his portraits have been through the market in recent times.

The portrait has been newly framed in a 2 1/4 inch black lacquer frame with ochre lines. It will be supplied with new brass hangers, new brass picture wire and will be ready to hang.

Image size: 15 x 10 1/8 inches - 38.05cm x 25.7cm

Frame size: 19 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches - 49.5cm x 36.85cm

Medium: Oils on canvas

Condition: Very good. The surface is clean and relatively taut, with no craquelure or repairs. There is evidence of old woodworm in one of the stretcher bars, which we have treated as a precaution. There is minor rippling to the canvas which is not really apparent when hung.