Lot 115: Filippo Baratti (Italian 19th century)

Life Guards passing Hyde Park Corner
signed and dated 'Ph. Baratti/London 1885' (lower right)
oil on canvas
64 x 92 cm. (25 1/4 x 36 1/4 in.)

Provenance:
Christie's London, 26 June 1987, lot 28;
Corporate collection.

Born in Trieste, Filippo Baratti participated in the 1868 Esposizione di Belle Arti, held in the Brera gallery in Milan. For the next four years he regularly exhibited works at the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti of Turin. While the majority of his paintings were of an Orientalist flavour, painted in the highly polished and naturalistic style of his French contemporary, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Baratti also ventured into historical painting, as well as producing a number of highly detailed scenes of city life which date from the mid 1880s.

Although there is little more biographical information on the artist, we can trace his movements through Europe by his dated works. His earliest Orientalist works are painted at the Alhambra palace, Granada, in the 1870s, and he appears to be working in Paris in 1883, before moving to London, where he produced a number of impressive city scenes between 1884 and 1886, including a view of Whitehall in 1884, 'St. Paul's Cathedral from Aldgate' (1885), and 'Waterloo Place' (1886, sold in these rooms, 18 March 2003, lot 82). Baratti then appears to have returned to France, where there are a number of works dated from the early 1900s.