FRANCIS XAVIER FABRE (attr. A)
(Montpellier, 1766 - 1837)
View of Tivoli with statue of Pan and classical figures
Oil on canvas, 58.7X72.1 cm
A pupil of the Academy of Montpellier and of Jacques Louis David in Paris, Fabre won the Prix de Rome in 1787 and moved to Italy where he remained until 1824. In 1793 he is documented in Florence, where he became a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, gaining considerable success among the high aristocracy thanks to his skills as a portrait painter. His failure to return to France was caused by the outbreak of the French Revolution. The canvas under examination is undoubtedly well in the neoclassical taste and at the same time indebted to eighteenth-century Roman landscape painting.
