Angelo Beccaria Biography
Angelo Beccaria (Turin, 1820 - 1897) was an Italian landscape painter, active mainly in Piedmont.
At eighteen he entered the Albertina Academy in Turin. He studied figure with GB Biscarra, but subsequently dedicated himself exclusively to landscape, taking M. d'Azeglio and the Genevan A. Calame as models.
He began to exhibit at the Society promoting Fine Arts of Turin in 1843 and participated annually until 1860.
As a nineteenth-century Piedmontese landscape artist, Beccaria is still linked to a certain mannerism.
All his pictorial work remains practically fixed on these bases: in "The hay harvest" (1864, Turin, Gallery of Modern Art), "Country of invention" (1870) and "The hour of the meal" (Turin , coll. M. Rossi), to name just a few of the numerous landscapes that are repeated with a certain stylistic rigidity.
Less well known, but more interesting, are the oil studies, drawings and engravings. A series of six panels belonging to a private collection in Turin with countryside views, with soft and almost liquid colours, is of notable freshness and naturalness and goes well with some etchings with which Beccaria, while maintaining the careful precision of the paintings, obtains results very similar to those of the members of the Rivara School. A folder of drawings (figures, landscapes) is preserved in the Gallery of Modern Art in Turin: executed with a subtle sign, some of them are very elegant. Ten engravings (figures, landscapes, including the three mentioned) and three lithographs (including "The Arch of Susa", 1841) belong to the same museum.
Beccaria died in Turin on 14 January 1897
