The Ruins of Ostia Antica
Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome 1860 - Rome 1932)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1892
Materials
Pastel on cardboard
Measurements
356 x 533 mm (14 x 21 in)
Order this imageCollection
Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire
NT 1275293
Summary
Pastel on board, "The Ruins of Ostia Antica" by Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome 1860 - Rome 1932), 1892. Two columns at the right, pink wall foundations to their left beside a bank covered in white flowers. A barn and tower on the horizon, pale blue sky. Born in Rome into a family of sculptors in 1860, Giulio Aristide Sartorio was the Italian Pre-Raphaelite painter par excellence. He was inspired by the English Pre-Raphaelite painters, and was thus appealing to Charlotte Shaw who purchased a number of landscapes by Sartorio in Rome in 1895 (prior to her marriage to Bernard Shaw), besides commissioning her portrait the same year. Sartorio came to London in the 1890s, visiting many artists and designers associated with Pre-Raphaelitism and the Arts & Crafts, such as Burne-Jones and William Morris. Charlotte collected a total of 11 landscapes by Sartorio: 8 pastels; 3 oil on cardboard. These landscapes by Sartorio (now at Shaw’s Corner) had previously hung in the drawing room at the Shaws’ London flat at Adelphi Terrace. Sartorio was in touch with the Shaws at least until 1914, and a book survives in the collection from Sartorio to the Shaws inscribed ‘Christmas 1914’.
Provenance
The Shaw Collection. The house and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust by George Bernard Shaw in 1950, together with Shaw's photographic archive.
Marks and inscriptions
Signed bottom left "G. Sartorio Roma"
Makers and roles
Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome 1860 - Rome 1932), artist