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Angelo Morbelli (18 July 1853, Alessandria – 7 November 1919, Milan) was an Italian painter of socially conscious Genre art scenes. During his later years, he painted in the Divisionist style.
Morbelli’s respect for the real had already led him to use photography in order to study the framing and composition of his images; but he had also seen something of French, German, English and Dutch Realism (for example the work of Hubert von Herkomer and Max Liebermann), in reproduction if not directly when travelling in Germany and France. In Asphyxia (1884; part in Turin, Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna, part in priv. col.), showing a suicide couple, and Sold (1884; Milan, Galleria di Arte Moderna) Morbelli adopted a cruder Realism. However, these paintings were not well received by critics, and in response Morbelli again began to concentrate on scenes from the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, producing works such as Last Sacrament (1884; Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna), in which the brushstroke is deliberately broken up and there is an increasing use of juxtaposed pure colours in the search for greater atmospheric truth. Such experiments are further documented by the two versions of Milan Central Station (1887; Rome, Ferrovie dello Stato and 1889; Milan, Gallera di Arte Moderna), in which the sharpness of the image is lost in the attempt to convey a sense of atmosphere. In Dawn (1891; Barcelona, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), a calm scene of a woman and child at a farmyard pump, Morbelli accentuated the use of pure colours in accordance with the laws of complementarity, seeking to establish the mixture as a product of the observer’s perception.
Morbelli then returned to some of his former themes, painting, for example, a Divisionist version of Sold! (1897; priv. col.). However, he continued to study the old people in the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, where he had obtained a room of his own in which to carry out his work. The numerous canvases he painted there constitute a true ‘poem of old age’ in which Morbelli compared the human condition with natural scenes. In A Map in Winter (1903; Alessandria, Pinacoteca Civica) he juxtaposed the white hair of his elderly sitters as it is reflected in the few rays of light coming through the window of the home, with the whiteness coming from outside, from the roofs of the city under snow. Other works in this group are the Christmas of Those Left Behind (1903; Venice, Ca' Pesaro) and Winter in the Pio Albergo Trivulzio (1909; Turin, Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna). At the Exposition Universelle of 1900, Morbelli was presented with another gold medal for Day of Celebration at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio. In the triptych Dream and Reality (1905) the Symbolist strain in these works comes to the fore: the interrelation of opposite principles is suggested by placing a symbol of young life and hope between images of age and memory. The centre of the triptych shows a young couple embracing on a balcony and turning to look upwards at the stars, while the side panels both show solitary old people.
Morbelli also carried out a large number of Divisionist landscapes, especially during his summers in the family country house at Colma di Rosignano near Montferrat, for example Sunday Dawn (1915; Piacenza, Galleria di Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi). In some of these works a note of abandon and of solitude reveals a melancholic and symbolic interpretation of landscape, as in ‘Era già l’ora che volge al desio’ (1913; priv. col.). Morbelli spent his last years alternating between winters in Milan and summers in Usseglio. In 1912, he began writing a book on Divisionism, in the form of a private diary. He died of pneumonia, aged sixty-six.
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