Antonie or Anton Sminck Pitloo (21 April or 8 May 1790 – 22 June 1837) was a Dutch painter. His surname was originally Pitlo, but he added the extra "o" because he was often mistaken for an Italian while resident in Italy. In Italian he is also known as Antonio van Pitloo.

Biography

Pitloo was born in

Arnhem Arnhem ( or ; german: Arnheim; South Guelderish: ''Èrnem'') is a city and municipality situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands about 55 km south east of Utrecht. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland, located on both banks of ...

. He started studying painting first at

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and then at

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, where there was already an international artistic colony, in 1811. He took advantage of a scholarship offered by

Louis Bonaparte Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (born Luigi Buonaparte; 2 September 1778 – 25 July 1846) was a younger brother of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. He was a monarch in his own right from 1806 to 1810, ruling over the Kingdom of Holland (a French cl ...

, the King of Holland. In 1815, after the fall of Bonaparte, the scholarship payments ceased. He was then invited to

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

by the Russian diplomat and art connoisseur Count Grigory Vladimirovich Orloff (1777 – 22 June 1826). In 1816, Pitloo won, in a public competition, the post of professor of landscape at the Neapolitan Academy. Lord Napier lauded him as a landscape painter:

his manner is not very careful or scholastic, but full of sensibility. His pencil is always true to general effects, whether his canvass represents the prospect basking in the mid-day brightness of the Italian sky, or the waves flashing in the train of the level sun, or the fields refreshed and steaming in the dawn; every color finds its counterpart on his palette, and no aerial magic is so evanescent as to elude his subtle imitation: although not so perfect in the delineation of particular objects, he could touch the different kinds of foliage with sufficient exactness; his foregrounds were managed with taste; and his figures, being prudently removed to some distance from the eye, formed an agreeable adjunct to the inanimate scene.

In 1820 he married Giulia Mori and thus became a citizen of the

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ( it, Regno delle Due Sicilie) was a kingdom in Southern Italy from 1816 to 1860. The kingdom was the largest sovereign state by population and size in Italy before Italian unification, comprising Sicily and a ...

. He became a lecturer at the Art Institute of Art at Naples where he specialized in pastoral painting. Around 1826 he was living in Vicoletto del Vasto 15, with Carl Götzloff,

Giacinto Gigante Giacinto Gigante (1806–1876) was an Italian painter, engraver, and teacher. He was known for his landscape and vista paintings, exemplary works of the Neapolitan School of Posillipo. Biography Early life Giacinto Gigante was born on July 11, ...

and Teodoro Duclere. Gabriele Smargiassi was his pupil and successor at the Academy. Another pupil was Vincenzo Franceschini. He remained in Naples until his death during a

cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...

epidemic. He was buried in the English Cemetery there. He was considered a leading exponent of the " Posillipo School" of painting, named to the area where he lived in Naples. His paintings have been compared to precursors of

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

, some sixty years before this was invented.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pitloo, Antonie Sminck 1790 births 1837 deaths 19th-century Dutch painters Dutch male painters Dutch engravers Italian vedutisti Dutch landscape painters People from Arnhem 18th-century Neapolitan people Deaths from cholera Academic staff of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli 19th-century Neapolitan people 19th-century Dutch male artists