>From Volterra, looking towards the Pisan Hills, 1898-99. Watercolour on paper; 19¾ x 27¼ inches (50.2 x 69.2). Private collection.
Corbet trained at initially at Heatherley’s School of Art and then at the Slade School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. He initially went to Italy intending to stay for three years beginning in the winter of 1880-81 and living at the Via di San Basilio. He soon met Giovanni Costa. After working with Costa he gave up painting portraits to concentrate on landscape painting, primarily views of Italy, and occasional figure subjects. Agressi, who called him “one of Costa’s most devoted followers” (211), was not the only one to recognize his talents. William Sharp considered him Costa’s principal follower: "There is a landscape art which is somewhat foreign to our general taste or understanding: it has not the direct or immediate appeal of what is familiar to us. Among the best examples of this genre is Mr. Ridley Corbet’s Afternoon in Italy at the New Gallery, a work worthy of the ablest pupil of the great Italian landscapist Giovanni Costa, the Wordsworth of pictorial art, as he has been called" (471).
This work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1899, no. 1229. Christopher Newall has pointed out that such landscapes often had symbolic meanings and were not merely topographical representations of the Italian countryside:
He made painting tours in Tuscany each year and was a close friend of Costa’s. His Volterra, looking towards the Pisan Hills fulfils the Etruscan principles of landscape painting in every respect except as a medium. Detail and foreground are subordinate to the geographical character and overall perspective of the landscape. What is in one sense a specific and accurate view of the Tuscan mountainside may also be understood as a symbolic representation of a quintessential type of landscape, calculated to remind the viewer of the sights and sensations of that country. During the Aesthetic Movement, watercolour painting came to express the inner moods and sensibilities of artists. Veils of subjective and highly personal meaning were drawn over the appearance of the real world, and by this process the disguised and distorted forms assumed symbolic rather than naturalistic meaning. [118]
Corbet’s figurative paintings associated with the Aesthetic Movement include such works as Love’s Messenger of 1888 and A Loving Psyche Who Loses Sight of Love of 1900. The landscape backgrounds of these pictures, however, are still very reflective of the Etruscan School.
Bibliography
Newall, Christopher. Victorian Watercolours. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1987.
Sharp, William. “The Art of the Year”, National Review 21 (1893): 471-73.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]Created 19 December 2022