L'Avaro [The Miser]

Antonio Piccinni 1846 - 1920

Summary

An elderly man bent over an open bureau with a money bag and coins on the desk. The man is facing to the left and has his elbows resting on the desk near to the money, his face is turned to the viewer. There are framed pictures on the back wall to the upper right and a shelf with crockery on it to the upper left. There is a chair in the background to the lower right. This etching was one of a collection formed by print expert PG Hamerton (1834-94) for the Manchester Art Museum, an educational gallery which opened in 1886 in the industrial suburb of Ancoats. The collection was transferred to the City Art Gallery in 1912, the Art Museum maintaining that they did not have enough space to display it. On acquisition, the collection was displayed together, with a catalogue of the pithy comments on each print that Hamerton had made in 1882. For this work, he had noted, 'A good specimen of quite recent Italian etching, over-finished to my thinking, and especially too equally finished throughout, but there is no denying its accomplished skill.'