On the Bay of Naples

c. 1830

Léon-François-Antoine Fleury

Painter, French, 1804 - 1858

Cotton-white and slate-gray clouds drift and churn across a pale blue sky over a grassy hill that slopes to the edge of a placid body of water in this horizontal painting on paper. The horizon comes about a fifth of the way up the composition, and the scene is loosely painted so many of the brushstrokes are visible. Closest to us, two people with peach-colored skin are on a beach piled with smoke-gray and caramel-brown boulders. Both people wear dark vests over long-sleeved, white shirts and knee-length white pants. They are loosely painted so it is difficult to tell if they wear dark caps or have dark hair. One bends double to reach toward the sand, and the other stands and seems to watch, perhaps holding a brown sack over one shoulder. In the near distance to our left, a grassy hill rises steeply from the water’s edge from behind a stone wall. A couple touches of gray paint suggest smoke rising from chimneys in the town beyond. About a dozen masted ships, most with their sails tied up, line the harbor across the water from us. The water shifts from deep teal-blue in front of the hill, to our left, to aquamarine and fog-blue to our right. Ripples gently break around a brown boulder in the water near the lower right corner of the paper. The horizon is lined in the deep distance with pale gray mountains beneath the sweeping sky.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on paper

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Frank Anderson Trapp

  • Dimensions

    overall: 22.9 x 29.5 cm (9 x 11 5/8 in.)
    framed: 37.8 x 44.5 x 5.1 cm (14 7/8 x 17 1/2 x 2 in.)

  • Accession

    2004.166.15


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased in Paris by (James Mackinnon, London);[1] purchased 1999 by Frank Anderson Trapp [1922-2005], Pittsburgh; gift 2004 to NGA.
[1] According to handwritten note by Mr. Trapp, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1999

  • Land, Sea and Sky, 1770-1870, James Mackinnon (London) at W.M. Brady & Co., Inc., New York, 1999, no. 16, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20185708


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