|This biography from the Archives of AskART:|
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Baratti was born in Trieste, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. Little is known of his early years, however in 1868 he was
exhibiting at the Esposizione di Belle Arte in Milan. Baratti then
moved to Turin, where he exhibited at the Società Promatirice di Belle
Baratti was very much an Orientalist painter, although also
painting occasional landscapes, society genre subjects and of course
city views. The rise in interest throughout Europe for the Romantic and
exotic subjects of North Africa and the Ottoman Empire was inspired by
the likes of Delacroix and subsequently Jean Leon Gerome (1824-1904).
Baratti’s Orientalist subjects set amidst the Moorish architecture of
Granada’s Alhambra Palace, or imaginary palaces of the Ottoman Empire,
follow the style of Gerome, whose work Baratti is likely to have seen
Paris was the city to which Baratti would return, working there in
the 1870’s, in the 1880’s following his sojourn in London and was
working there at the turn of the century, evidenced by his Place de la
Concorde of 1904.
Baratti, as has been seen, was not solely an Orientalist and his
finest works emanated from the period in London during the mid 1880’s.
Here he produced a number of views of the city, amongst which were St.
Paul’s Cathedral from Aldgate, 1885; Waterloo Place, 1886; Whitehall, 1885; and the present painting, all iconic views of London.
These works exemplify Baratti’s highly finished technique and his
consummate success as a painter of topographical yet narrative
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