Antonie Sminck Pitloo
Encyclopedia
Arnhem
Arnhem is a city and municipality, situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland and located near the river Nederrijn as well as near the St. Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem has 146,095 residents as one of the...
, 21 April or 8 May 1790 – Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, 22 June 1837) was a Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
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.
Pitloo started studying painting first at Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and then at Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, where there was already an international artistic colony, in 1811. He took advantage of a scholarship offered by Louis Bonaparte
Louis Bonaparte
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Prince Français, Comte de Saint-Leu , King of Holland , was the fifth surviving child and the fourth surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino...
, the King of Holland. In 1815, after the fall of Bonaparte, the scholarship payments ceased. He was then invited to Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
by the Russian diplomat and art connoisseur Count Grigory Vladimirovich Orloff (1777 – 22 June 1826).
In 1820 he married Giulia Mori and thus became a citizen of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, commonly known as the Two Sicilies even before formally coming into being, was the largest and wealthiest of the Italian states before Italian unification...
. 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
Giacinto Gigante was an Italian painter. Gigante was introduced to painting by his father Gaetano Gigante. His brothers Achille Gigante and Ercole Gigante also became landscape artists...
and Teodoro Duclere.
He remained in Naples until his death during a cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
epidemic. He was buried in the English Cemetery
English Cemetery, Naples
The English Cemetery, Il Cimitero degli Inglesi, or more correctly, Il Cimitero acattolico di Santa Maria delle Fede, is located near Piazza Garibaldi, Naples, Italy...
there.
He was considered a leading exponent of the "Posillipo School" of painting. His paintings have been compared to precursors of Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, some sixty years before this was invented.