Boldin, Giovanni (Boldini Giovanni)

(1842-1931)
Born in Ferrara, 31 December 1842 in the family of the artist. For six years he studied at the Florentine Academy of Arts, then from 1869 he worked in London, where he gained fame as a portraitist. In 1872 he settled in Paris and began to exhibit his works in the Salon.
In the genre and landscape painting, and later in Boldini's portrait used the experience of masters plein air painting and the Impressionists. His work is distinguished by the virtuosity of painting techniques and the remarkable harmony of color. Portraits of Adolf Menzel (1895, Berlin - Dahlem) and James Whistler (1897, New York, Brooklyn Museum) characterize it as a deep and penetrating portraitist. Between 1890 and 1910 Boldini created a series of brilliant portraits of famous public figures and people in the arts and theater. In this field he was a serious rival to John Singer Sargent.

Boldini twice won the Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in Paris - in 1889 and 1900. In 1932, after the death of the master, took his personal exhibition in the Venice Biennale, was organized in 1933 dedicated to him a memorial exhibition in New York. In 1935 the exhibition of Italian art in Paris, was presented eight paintings by Boldini, including six portraits, among which were portraits of the composer Giuseppe Verdi and the poet Count Robert de Montesquieu. Boldini paintings were exhibited along with the works of Sargent in a special exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 1959. Boldini died in Paris on January 12, 1931.