“IT IS HARD to determine to which country belongs the glory of having formed Giuseppe De Nittis,” wrote an art critic in 1884. The writer continued his encomium, elaborating on how De Nittis’s style could not be placed, “for he passed for French in London and for English in Paris, for Italian in Italy.” His inimitable work, which collapsed aesthetic binaries, belonged “not even to impressionism of which he was for a brief moment made the brilliant champion.”
De Nittis, whose name no longer carries the star-power of the French impressionists, was once renowned among them. As an Italian in Paris whose untimely death cut his career short, De Nittis has been largely overlooked—but “An Italian Impressionist in Paris”, an exhibition
