Giovanni Fattori

Giovanni Fattori led the Macchiaioli, a group of Italian painters working in patches of colour, macchie, a decade or so before the French Impressionists arrived at something similar. The parallel is often overstated. The Macchiaioli were after solidity and strong tonal contrast, not broken light.

Fattori painted the Tuscan Maremma, its herdsmen, white oxen and long empty horizons, along with a substantial body of military subjects from the wars of Italian unification. The battle pictures avoid heroics. Soldiers wait, march, and sit around.

He was a serious etcher in later life and taught in Florence. Wide horizontal formats suited him particularly well, with a single line of wall or beach running the whole canvas and figures placed small against it.