LAPITO, Louis-Auguste - b. 1803 Joinville-le-Pont, d. 1874 Boulogne-sur-Seine

French painter. Aged 15, Lapito entered the atelier of Louis-Etienne Watelet (1780-1866), before continuing his training under François-Joseph Heim. Like many of his contemporaries, he had a ‘Wanderjahr’ in Italy in 1826, after which he became an indefatigable traveller. He visited Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Italy and Corsica, as well as rural France, painting numerous watercolour views and oil sketches on which his larger oil paintings were based.

During the 1840’s Lapito increasingly allied himself with the naturalistic school of landscape painting, and became a member of the group of classically-trained French nineteenth-century landscape painters, such as Corot, who sought to regenerate historical landscape painting through the attentive study of nature.

In 1843 he exhibited with the Maîtres Vivants in Holland and painted landscapes near Fontainebleau, home of the Barbizon School. Lapito was a prolific artist exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon from 1827 to 1870. He won a first class medal in the Salon of 1835 and his official success was crowned with the award of the Légion d’honneur in 1837. A number of his pictures were acquired by the French State and are now in museums in Menton, Valence, and Villefranche-sur-Saone.

View of Genoa

Although Italy was always a popular destination for vedutisti in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, views of Genoa are rare compared to those of Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples. The present view of Genoa was taken from the east with the Lanterna and the Church of Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano in the distance and the Santuario di Nostra Signora del Monte to the right.

The painting is signed and dated lower left: A. Lapito 1863.