"Ciociara" by Gaetano Esposito. Oil painting on canvas from the second half of the 19th century. In excellent condition. Signed in brown in the lower right corner. Measures: cm h 52 x 30. Gaetano Esposito (1858 - 1911) He was born in Salerno on November 17, 1858, into a family of fishermen. After surviving a shipwreck and escaping the seafarer's life, he received his first drawing lessons from the painter from Salerno, Gaetano D'Agostino. The young man's artistic talent was later noticed by Domenico Morelli, who, in 1872, had him admitted, as a stipend-holder of the province of Salerno, to the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. In addition to academic courses, E. attended the evening school of Stanislao Lista, but in general his studies were rather inconsistent. His rebellious nature and inability to submit to any discipline pushed him rather to wander through the streets of the city and the surrounding countryside in search of subjects more congenial to his temperament. Irascible, distrustful, and jealous, E. was not loved by his fellow students, with the sole exception of Antonio Mancini, with whom he shared his first artistic experiences and with whom he remained bound by ties of esteem and friendship throughout his life. Mancini is responsible for an intense youthful portrait of E., painted in oil in 1878 (Naples, Ottaviano coll.; repr. in Schettini, 1953, p. 153). The exhibition activity began already during the years of study with participation, starting in 1875, in the exhibitions of the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti of Naples; in 1877, moreover, three paintings by E. appeared, alongside the works of A. Mancini, F. P. Michetti and V. Migliaro, at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Naples. Also in 1877, E. won the encouragement prize offered by the academy with two pencil drawings, thanks to which he was able to complete his artistic training with a study trip to Florence. The assimilation of Morelli's lesson is evident, identifiable above all in the choice of the historical-religious vein with oriental taste and setting, together however with a greater accuracy in the definition of the outlines of the figures and a more vivid and brilliant chromaticism. The first years of activity were not without difficulty for E., forced to undersell his works to survive and to ask for hospitality from other painters due to the lack of his own studio. The artistic production of this period is linked to the execution of genre paintings, in which the basic verismo is enriched by effects of virtuoso descriptivism not foreign to the influence of M. Fortuny. In these works, E. already appears engaged in a more personal research on color. Later E. directed his pictorial research towards the Neapolitan seicento painters, in particular Massimo Stanzione and Bernardo Cavallino, from the study of whom he drew the model for a more refined and sensitive chromaticism, together with a greater attention to tonal values ??and to the effects of light. The last twenty years of the century represent the period of most intense activity for E., also engaged in some decoration works, such as those, carried out in 1887 together with other artists, for the Gambrinus café in Naples (Limoncelli, 1952, pp. 169 ff.); those for the ceiling of the Garibaldi municipal theater in Santa Maria Capua Vetere in 1895 and finally those for the ceiling of the renovated Stock Exchange building in Naples. In this same period E. focused his interest on landscape painting, portraying mostly seascapes in which he obtained his highest expressive results. Towards the end of the century, the impulse that had until then supported the tireless activity of E. seemed to be exhausted: his participation in exhibitions became less frequent, while his own pictorial elaboration, limited to the usual themes of genre verismo, seemed to be lost in exasperated tonal research. In 1910 a tragic episode definitively upset the already precarious mental balance of the painter: a young student, Venturina Castrignani, who had fallen in love with the master, committed suicide after being rejected. Deeply shaken and tormented by feelings of guilt, E. in turn took his own life shortly afterwards, in Sala Consilina (Salerno) on April 7, 1911.