Provenance
Durand-Ruel, Paris, 4 March, 1910 (acquired from the artist)
Angelo Sommaruga, Paris, 30 January, 1932 (acquired from the above)
Private collection, Milan.
Exhibited
Milan, Fondazione Mazzotta, Federico Zandomeneghi Impressionista veneziano, 20 February – 6 June 2004, no. 64, p. 101 (illustrated)
Rome, Chiostro del bramante, Federico Zandomeneghi: un veneziano tra gli impressionisti, November 2005 - March 2006, no. 47, p. 71, p. 118 (illustrated)
Literature
E. Piceni, Zandomeneghi, Milan 1967, no. 319.
E. Piceni, Zandomeneghi, Catalogo Generale dell’opera (seconda edizione a cura di R. Capitani e M.G. Piceni), Bramante, Busto Arsizio, 1991, no. 319.E.
Piceni, Federico Zandomeneghi, Catalogo Generale, Milan, 2006, no. 248, p. 255.
Catalogue note
Federico Zandomeneghi’s Hat Maker is a luminous example of late 19th-century Impressionism filtered through an Italian sensibility. Painted sometime between 1895 and 1910, the work depicts a young woman intently examining a lavish blue hat adorned with feathers and flowers. Zandomeneghi’s treatment of the subject, intimate yet dynamic, reflects both his Parisian artistic environment and his persistent interest in domestic femininity and fashion as key themes of modern life.
The young woman, seated at a small round table, is bathed in soft, diffuse light. Dressed in a coral-pink blouse with a lace collar and a deep plum skirt, she studies an opulent blue hat with quiet intensity. Her brown hair is pulled into a loose chignon, and her absorbed, almost reverential posture underscores the intimate mood of the scene. The hat—a whirl of cobalt and violet—unfurls in dynamic strokes, its plumes and floral trimmings rendered with the rapid, swirling brushwork that recalls the style of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), a close friend of Zandomeneghi. Behind her, a backdrop of dappled green and ochre suggests foliage or wallpaper without asserting depth, reinforcing the painting’s focus on visual sensation rather than narrative. A pincushion and flowers on the table subtly allude to the creative labor of feminine adornment and the tactile world of fashion.
Zandomeneghi, a Venetian by birth, became part of the Parisian Impressionist milieu after moving to France in the 1870s. While he exhibited alongside Claude Monet (1840-1926), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) in the later Impressionist exhibitions, his works retained an Italian lyricism and a refined sense of contour. His repeated focus on women engaged in quiet, everyday activities connects him to contemporaries such as Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) and Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), with whom he shared a sensitivity to the rhythms of domestic life and female interiority.
This particular painting was once in the stock of Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922), the prominent Parisian dealer who played a major role in shaping the international market for Impressionist art. Durand-Ruel began acquiring Zandomeneghi’s work in the 1890s, recognizing its commercial appeal and exhibiting it alongside that of Monet, Renoir, and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899). Later, the painting passed to Angelo Sommaruga (1857-1941), a flamboyant Italian publisher and collector based in Paris. Sommaruga was known for supporting Italian artists abroad and for his connections within the Franco-Italian artistic milieu of the Belle Époque. His interest in Zandomeneghi’s work underscores the painter’s transnational status—an Italian artist who became, by the turn of the century, a distinctly Parisian chronicler of modern life.
This note was written by Elsa Dikkes.