Giovanni Segantini

Giovanni Segantini spent his last summer high on the Schafberg above the Engadine valley in the Swiss Alps, working outdoors at over 2,000 metres on a huge three-part painting of Alpine life. In September 1899 he fell ill there with peritonitis and died on the mountain, 41 years old, the triptych unfinished.

He had painted the Alps as almost no one else did, building light out of separate strokes of pure colour in the Divisionist manner, so that snow and grass seem to vibrate. His herds, mothers and mountain funerals carry a heavy symbolist mood.

His start had been grim: born in the Trentino, orphaned young, for years he was effectively stateless, holding papers from a country that no longer recognised him. He signed his canvases from the villages where he could afford to live.