Approaching Storm

Approaching Storm was painted by De Nittis in 1868, when he was twenty-two and had recently moved from Naples to Florence, where he encountered the Macchiaioli. The group valued extreme natural conditions — storms, intense noon light, dramatic weather effects — for the heightened contrasts of light and colour they produced, approaching them with direct observation rather than the romantic dramatisation of earlier nineteenth-century storm painting. Now held by the Pinacoteca Giuseppe De Nittis in Barletta, this early work shows De Nittis fully engaged with the plein-air principles of his Florentine training years and with the dramatic atmospheric effects that the Apulian and Campanian landscape could produce, particularly the luminous quality of the sky in the minutes before a storm breaks.

The approaching storm canvas exploits pre-storm light: a luminous greenish or yellowish atmosphere in the sky contrasted with the darkening of earth and vegetation below. The paint is handled with Macchiaioli directness — large, confident strokes establishing tonal relationships.