After Mass

Between 1891 and 1894 the painters of Milan were caught up in a lively argument about how a picture ought to be made, stirred by the polemical articles of Vittore Grubicy, the critic and dealer who championed Divisionism. Andrea Tavernier, working in Turin, absorbed that debate in this canvas of around 1897. Its colour is brilliant and its surface is thick and tactile, close to some Divisionist results without following their method. He gave as much attention to the individual people coming away from mass, catching the shades of character in each of them, as to the force of the light. Critics received the picture well, even though they disagreed about the way it was painted.