Édouard HOSTEIN
 (Pléhedel 1804 – Paris 1889)

 View of the Chigi Palace in Ariccia

 Oil on paper mounted on canvas
 Signed lower right
 28 x 44.5 cm

 Related works:
  
 Painting from the 1849 Salon under number 1059 and entitled View taken at Larricia (sic) near Rome.
 Édouard Hostein is one of the very best landscapers of the mid-19th century.
 Without a known master, he devoted himself to studies from nature, and began by specializing in lithography, collaborating in particular with Baron Taylor on views of Auvergne, Normandy and the Paris region. From then on, a traveling artist, he stayed in the Ardennes, Alsace and Germany in the second half of the 1830s, before quickly discovering Italy. On his return, he settled quite permanently in Dauphiné and in particular the Lyon region, making occasional stays in the Paris region, Nantes or Normandy (in particular around 1850).

 At the end of the 1850s, due to his wife's poor health, he stopped exhibiting at the Salon and made regular trips to Toulon, where he settled permanently in 1862; he became a member of the Académie du Var in 1877.
 Hostein is a "classical" painter, attentive to details and atmospheric rendering, without neglecting the picturesque, with an excellent panoramic sense.

 The town of Ariccia is located about thirty kilometers southeast of Rome, in the Alban Hills, in the same area as Nemi, Albano and Castel Gandolfo, sites that, like it, were part of the stages of the Grand Tour of painters. When the powerful Chigi family ruled the town from 1661, they commissioned Bernini to build the church of Santa Maria Assunta, whose dome can be seen on the right, as well as the Palazzo Chigi, located to the left of the church.

 The point of view adopted by Edouard Hostein is the one that artists often retained until the 1850s. In the background, the Roman countryside is revealed descending towards the Mediterranean, which emerges discreetly under a setting sun. A thin pink line underlines the horizon and the panoramic point of view adopted by the painter.