Angelo Morbelli
1853–1919 · Italian Divisionist and social genre painter
Angelo Morbelli (Alessandria, 1853 – Milan, 1919) was an Italian painter known for socially engaged genre scenes and, in his later years, for his commitment to Divisionism, the technique of separated colour that built light through juxtaposed brushstrokes. His work links late nineteenth-century Realism with the landscape painting of the early twentieth century.
He first studied music, but mastoiditis caused a progressive hearing loss and he turned to painting. In 1867 he enrolled at the Brera Academy in Milan thanks to a grant from the City Council of Alessandria. After his training he began exhibiting in Milan and Turin with landscapes and historical scenes, until in 1883 he shifted to contemporary subjects, above all the elderly residents of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio retirement home.
From that series came The Last Days, which won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. With Asphyxia (1884) and Sold (1887) he explored a harsher Realism, although critics received them poorly. Around 1895 he reached full Divisionist maturity with For Eighty Cents, a scene in the rice fields near Vercelli that created a sensation. He then returned to the elderly of the Trivulzio, and his late landscapes, painted mostly in summer, reveal a melancholic and symbolic tone.
Morbelli's legacy lies in the renewal of Italian social genre painting and in the spread of Divisionism in Lombardy and Piedmont.
Works (2)
A genre scene by Angelo Morbelli, dated 1897, showing workers pulling weeds from a rice field. Painted in oil on canvas, the picture turns everyday farm labour into its subject. Its title states the theme directly: a repeated, physical task observed up close, with the emphasis placed on the work itself rather than on any dramatic event.