Romualdo Frederico Locatelli

Private Collection, Baltimore, USA
Acquired from the estate of the above

 

The painting is in good condition. The canvas has been relined and is in good condition. Examination under ultraviolet light reveals some scattered spots of general retouching (mostly on the upper middle and upper left margins, on the apparel of the figure on the left, a few spots on the head of the figure on the right and a few spots forming a thin linear area on the middle right, which are visible only under UV light - the rest are scattered). Retouchings are visible only under UV light. The paint layers are well-preserved.
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Romualdo Locatelli's oeuvre was characterised by technical excellence, a flair for the dramatic, and deft strokes. As a renowned portraitist, drawing the essence of his subject or the sensation of an atmosphere is his forte. His early career was marked both by its precocious brilliance, and by its academicism. Although Italy produced some of the most avant-garde modernists, such as Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio de Chirico and Giorgio Morandi, in the period between the First and Second World Wars, Locatelli developed his art in the very different and conservative sphere of the art academies patronised by the ancien regime of church and king. King Vittorio Emanuele III opened his first exhibition in Rome and his son later commissioned the artist to paint portraits of his children. Locatelli also painted portraits of several Cardinals and other distinguished members of the Vatican.

The present work was executed in 1934, before his trip to Indonesia, and represents Locatelli's candid and unguarded side. Free of the formal setting - and demands - that his illustrious patrons must have required of him, Locatelli must have found painting the two young girls in Best Friends liberating. This atmosphere is clearly evident in the painting's loose, free brushstrokes. The textures also describe its creative process: paint had been brushed, smeared, flicked, scraped and layered onto the surface, infusing it with painterly depth. Focusing on their faces, Locatelli brought out the joy and innocence in their eyes and smiles. Compared to the clarity of their expressions, their dresses and settings seem blurry, as if they were constantly moving in delight and excitement. The contrast between his commissioned portraits and his more personal works is so great that one could not help but wonder if on some level this conveys his inner longing to escape.

In 1938, approximately four years after the completion of Best Friends, Locatelli sailed to the Dutch East Indies in December of that year, at the height of his career, with his wife, Erminia. They had met when he was twenty and she was a seventeen year old art student who became his model and the love of his life. He left for Java at the invitation of the Dutch government, which had been made through a Bandung-based Dutch collector, John de Jong, who fell in love with the artist's works during a visit to Italy. Locatelli soon became renowned and celebrated for his work there.

Because of the global political climate, Locatelli moved to Manila, in the Philippines in the early forties. It was there that his life was tragically cut too briefly at the age of 38 by a mysterious disappearance in the Philippine highlands during the Japanese Occupation in 1943. In the aftermath of the Second World War, most of Locatelli's canvasses were destroyed and his paintings became truly rare finds. The present work offers a rare glimpse of a young Locatelli – not only of his mastery but also of his hopes and dreams.