Pierre (Henri Theodore) Tetar van Elven (Dutch, 1828/1831-1908), "Busy Morning on the Square", 1866, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left corner, 59-1/4" x 41-1/2". Presented in a period giltwood and gesso frame; together with a photocopy of a letter of authentication issued in 1997 by the conservator and appraiser Antonio Loro, Ph.D., AAA, Houston, Texas. Provenance: Purchased in Milan, Italy in the 1960s by Rudolfo Gazzardi and his wife Josephine Doddis; thence by descent.

Pierre Tetar van Elven, royal court painter to Victor-Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia, had a very successful career as architectural genre painter, chronicling cityscapes abroad, including splendidly "exotic" places like Sardinia, Jerusalem and Morocco. Tetar van Elven was born into an artistic "Dutch School" family, from whom he received his early training. His father, Jan Baptiste Tetar van Elven (1805-1839), was an accomplished painter, lithographer and metal engraver of architectural scenes, as was his uncle/cousin Paul Tetar van Elven (1823-1896), who was but a mere five years his senior. After studying with his father, Tetar van Elven attended the Academy of Fine Art in Amsterdam and later the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague where he was a student of Jacobus Everhardus Josephus van den Berg (Dutch, 1802-1861), the accomplished portraitist and genre painter. From 1856 to 1861 he went on to study first in Paris, France, and then in Italy, before returning to Paris in 1861 where he exhibited widely over the next five years, receiving many prestigious honors and accolades, including the sale of a painting "La Soiree au Tuileries" to Emperor Napoleon III and the order of knight by the King of Sardinia. The painting offered here exemplifies Tetar van Elven's mature style- a unique blend of architectural (disegno) realism that appealed to the French and Italian academies that privileged finely drawn "Grand Tour" historical scenes- hence the highly coveted "Prix de Rome" in the French Salon, with Romantic lighting and fascination with the exotic in a distinctly Dutch genre- vignettes of daily life, called Genre painting. Here a mundane scene of commoners congregating around the plaza fountain to wash and water their livestock is elevated to an art that rivals the Gothic splendor of the cathedral and buildings that frame it.

References: Champlin, John Denison. Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings. Charles Scribner's Sons: New York, 1913. p. 262; "Pierre Henri Theodore Tetar van Elven." Oxford Art Online. 2007-2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.