Carlo Stratta

Antonio Fontanesi, the landscape painter who taught at the Accademia Albertina in Turin, once wrote to his favourite pupil with a plan for the day. Study nature out of doors while the light lasts, he told Carlo Stratta, and give the evenings to the figure, because landscape meant light, space and the infinite, and the figure meant the human soul and all its passions.

Stratta, born in Turin in 1852, joined Fontanesi's class in 1869 and also took a degree in engineering that he never used. From 1875 to 1884 he lived in Paris, studying with Thomas Couture until 1879 and showing at the Salon, and six months in Cairo gave him models for oriental scenes. Back in Turin he turned increasingly, from the 1890s, to modern interiors with figures, and he died in his native city in 1936.