Val d’Arno: Evening by Matthew Ridley Corbet ARA, 1850-1902 ARSA. Oil on canvas. Exhibited 1901. Support: 908 × 2089 mm; frame: 1243 × 2436 × 185 mm. Collection: Tate. Reference: NO1899. Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1901. Image kindly released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported). . [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Val d’Arno: Evening was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1901, no. 863, where it was obviously admired because it became one of the purchases of the Chantrey Bequest. This painting epitomizes the ‘Etruscan’ style of composition with its long horizontal format, simplified form, and the use of colour and tone to conjure up the fading light of an evening in Rome. A mysterious cloaked male figure looks out at the distant landscape. Two classical sculptures stand on top of the wall.

The Painting’s Critical Reception

Not surprisingly the critics praised this painting. The Art Journal wrote: “In the pictorial tumult of the Royal Academy the quiet-sweet voice of Mr. Ridley Corbett’s oblong may be inaudible. Often as the Val d’Arno has been depicted, this artist charges his view of it from a balustraded garden, where a pear tree blossoms, with new significance, new loveliness– we look across the plain, half veiled by smoke from the surrounding hamlets, towards the Carrara Hills, whose fretted heights stand against the western sky” (170-72) The Magazine of Art, however, surprisingly gave it short shrift and failed to recognize the influence of Costa: “Mr. Corbet’s ‘Val d’Arno’ has been acquired by the Chantrey Fund – a quiet view from a terrace above the river – little representative of the earlier manner of the artist derived from Giovanna Costa” (501-02). Austin Chester when later discussing pictures included in the Chantrey collection singled out the work of Corbet for praise: “Corbet had not that quality in his work, which in that of Mason, we recognize under the title of genius, but in all he did there was a strain of elegance, a feeling of mystery, a suggestion of the unseen. These qualities are particularly discernable in ‘Val d’Arno: Evening,’ and it is in this picture particularly that that we trace the influence of Costa, whose work in England and to the general public is little known” (129).

Links to related material

Bibliography

Agresti, Olivia Rossetti. Giovanni Costa, his life, work, and times. London: Gay, 1907.

“The Royal Academy of 1901.” The Art Journal LXIII (1901): 161-76.


Created 28 August 2022