François Brunery (Italian, 1849-1926) A Venetian backwater Oil on canvas 12-1/2 x 22-1/4 inches (31.8 x 56.5 cm) Signed lower right: F. Bruneri PROVENANCE: Susanin's Auction House, Chicago, Illinois, December 5, 2018, lot 6055; Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio. Also known as Francesco Brunery and Frappachino Brunson, François Brunery was born in Turin, Italy, but received his academic training in France. He studied both with Jean-Leon Gérôme and Leon Bonnat, and won an honorable mention at the Paris Salon in 1903. Like many gifted landscapists of his time, Brunery worked in Venice where picturesque subjects were just as plentiful as were the tourists eager to purchase the type of meticulously naturalistic scenes Brunery produced. The popularity of Venice among artists of the late 19th century was humorously recorded by Harry Quilter, an art critic for the London Times: "I had been drawing for about five days, in one of the back canals, a specially beautiful doorway, when one morning I heard a sort of war-whoop, and there was [American expatriate artist James McNeill] Whistler in a gondola, close by, shouting. . . . ‘Hi, hi! What? What? Here, I say, you’ve got my doorway!’ I replied, ‘It’s my doorway, I’ve been here for the last week.’ ‘I don’t care a straw, I found it out first.’" HID03101062020 © 2020 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved