Next to the hearth

Next to the Hearth, painted in 1864, is among the earliest known works by De Nittis, made when he was eighteen and had recently begun training in Naples after being expelled from the Bari art school for refusing to follow academic methods. A figure beside a domestic hearth connects to the long tradition of northern European interior painting, from Dutch Golden Age genre scenes to French nineteenth-century intimisme. At this stage De Nittis was absorbing the plein-air naturalism of the Portici school alongside the broader Italian verismo tradition. Painted on panel — a stable, smooth ground for careful early work — this is a document of his very first artistic steps, before his decisive move to Florence in 1867 where he would encounter the Macchiaioli and their radical approach to light and colour in the open air. It is now in the Pinacoteca Giuseppe De Nittis in Barletta.

Painted on panel with the careful, controlled technique of a young artist in training. The fall of firelight across a figure in a domestic interior is the primary compositional concern, with warm hearth light contrasting against surrounding shadow, differentiating surface textures.