Giuseppe Canella and Parisian Painting

Giuseppe Canella (b. Verona, 1788; d. Florence, 1847) was a painter of landscape and town views in Italy, Spain, France, and Northern Europe. No study of Canella has appeared in English; he is the subject of brief treatments by Bassi-Rathgeb (1945) and Pittaluga (1972). The focus of this dissertation is Canella's work as a Parisian cityscapist (1823-1832). Three chapters and an appendix catalogue of all known Paris views by Canella treat the iconography and stylistic development of his cityscapes and contemporary critical response to them. Two chapters and an appendix listing Parisian views exhibited at the Salon lay out the history of Parisian cityscape from the mid-eighteenth century through Impressionism, not only to place Canella's work in context, but to call for a reappraisal of forgotten painters whose achievements forecast the greatest Parisian views, those of the Impressionists. Impressionist cityscape has been seen as having little connection to past art, springing instead from critics' demands for a painting of modern life, Haussmann's transformation of Paris, the influence on avant-garde painters of the optical peculiarities of early photography, and the Impressionists' own unique style and approach to the modern urban motif. However, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, an international group of Parisian cityscape specialists, including Canella, depicted contemporary Paris in a manner analogous to that of the Impressionists. The realistic portrayal of the settings and protagonists of modern life in seemingly arbitrary "slice-of-life" compositions determined by the artist's point of view and characterized by elements "cut off" at the edges of the canvas and an anti-monumental obscuration of important buildings and random scattering of figures are components of their style, as is an interest in the effects of light and atmosphere and a dedication to the direct study of nature in preparatory works. The cityscapes of the Impressionists are set against this background and seen as the finest products of a rich, continuous artistic heritage. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of early Parisian cityscape photography and a consideration of how Impressionist city views differ from those of earlier view painters.