oil on canvas, 60 x 99 cm, signed lower right, in red "EVidovic"

Research information

It is likely a work that was exhibited at a solo exhibition organized by Emanuel Vidović in Zagreb at the end of 1903. In the catalog and the exhibition, marked by the preface of the young Ivo Tartaglia, Vidović then exhibited 54 paintings, most of which were painted in Venice and Chioggia in the last years of the 1800s.

The painting depicts the Venice canal in Chioggia with the Sant'Andrea bridge, which the master Emanuel Vidović placed unusually far at the end of the long panoramic perspective of the painted frame. However, despite this, the old bridge with its brick structure and slightly broken arch is not only recognizable but also a vivid identification code of his Chioggian vedutas. Unlike the first twilight vedutas of the Venetian lagoon and Chioggia from the early 90s of the 19th century, which he early moved away from rigid styles at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the painter conjured this veduta as much with twilight rays of light, as well as much more by dissolving the form using slightly pastier applications of colors and sketchy and blotchy brush strokes. The gondola with four figures accentuated by contrasts of their bright clothes, earthy sail colors, and a oblique bundle of sunlight illuminating the architecture of the palaces along the canal coast make the painting "Sunset in Chioggia" much more lively than those early ones dedicated to the Venetian lagoon. The impression of unity and even the patina shown by Vidović's harmonized chords of muted colors and the rhythm of lines that depict the gentle rippling of the sea surface are features of this Vidović's veduta, and almost the entire Italian painting section, which we do not find among his contemporaries at the turn of the last two centuries. Of course, we also think of Italian macchiaioli and the first Croatian landscape painters who grew up at Central European academies and under the auspices of the beneficent Bukovac's Zagreb activity from 1894 to 1903. For the Italian section of Vidović's creation, it should also be emphasized that its beginnings date back to 1887 when he enrolled at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, that from 1892 he lived, painted and exhibited in Milan, and that the Venetian lagoon and Chioggia became the central places of his painting expeditions from 1895. This is all the more so since in 1899 he married Amalia Baffo from Chioggia and returned to Split with her the following year. But longer stays in her homeland did not stop there and the picturesque views of the fishing village in the south of the lagoon knew how to capture his attention even in the decade before the Great War, and in the years afterwards. BRP

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