Giuseppe Raggio Marina 1889 oil painting on canvas depicting a marina coastal landscape with sailing boats, donkeys in the foreground, next to a seated boy. In good condition, the painting is signed and dated in the lower right-hand corner, and is set within a frame with a wide rebate; it has evidently been cleaned in the past without being removed from the frame, which justifies the yellowed border profile.

Born in Chiavari near Genova in 1823, the artist soon abandoned his career as naval officer and exhibited his first paintings in Genoa. He moved to Florence to follow courses at the Academy of Fine Arts. Initially interested in religious themes, influenced by the painter Pietro Benvenuti from Arezzo, he then came under the influence of the Macchiaioli, especially Giovanni Fattori, and adhered to his project to renew painting in a verist key.

In 1848, he moved to Rome where he began to take an interest in landscape painting, taken from life. He depicted the Roman countryside: grandiose scenery of beauty and toil, misery and desolation, but with moments of symbiosis between man and nature, with peasants at work, herds of buffaloes, and cowboys on horseback. Giuseppe Raggio visited the Pontine Marshes and the Grosseto area, also passionate about social issues and fascinated by the solitude of the Roman countryside.

He was a friend of Giovanni Costa, was bound to identical subjects, and was enchanted by Costa’s innovative artistic ideas, which called for a new direction in art, based on true feeling and true portraiture and away from the Academies.

Raggio interpreted his subjects with realism and intensity, qualities typical of an animal painter.

In 1890 he was one of the founders of the association of artists In arte libertas, conceived by Nino Costa, and in 1904 he joined the group of the XXV della Campagna romana. He took part in the Venice Biennials of 1899 and 1903; the International Exhibition in Milan in 1906 and the Exhibition of Fine Arts, part of the national exhibition for the fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy. The painting Amor materno, depicting a group of foals huddling around their mother, pleased Queen Elena so much that she bought it. Together with the painting Buoi col bifolco (Oxen with the Oxen), it is now in the picture gallery of the Quirinale.

Giuseppe Raggio died in complete isolation in Rome in 1916 at the age of 93.