Slappin' Paint

Antonio Mancini - Self Portrait 

“The sun sets. The man dies. It is right. But what a pity not to be able to paint any more.”
- Antonio Mancini to a friend.

Some artists just love to paint.  You can sense it in the way the paint lies on the canvas — sometimes slapped on with seemingly apparent abandon. Here we have a painter who apparently went mad as a young man (perhaps from using paints with mercury pigments in them), who lays on his pigments with pure bravado, yet who was very careful in getting his proportions just right. Mancini (1852 - 1930) seems to have gotten lost in the passage of time but he could bring everyday subjects to life and John Singer Sargent is said to have called him “the worlds greatest living artist”. That’s quite some recommendation!