Neapolitan Song

Joseph Stella, Neapolitan Song, 1929, oil on canvas, 38 ³⁄₈ x 28 ¹⁄₄ in. (97.5 x 71.7 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Françoise and Harvey Rambach, 2000.11

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Artwork Details

Title: Neapolitan Song
Artist: Joseph Stella
Date: 1929
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 38 ³⁄₈ x 28 ¹⁄₄ in. (97.5 x 71.7 cm.)
Credit Line: Gift of Françoise and Harvey Rambach
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Highlights: 20th Century
Subjects: Animal — bird
Landscape — mountain
Landscape — plant
Object Number: 2000.11
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2000.11

Artwork Description

Stella believed that every day should "begin and end [with] the painting of a flower." The exotic plants he sketched in the Bronx Botanical Garden resurface in this imaginary scene of the Bay of Naples, drawn with the precision and love of nature that Stella absorbed from Italy's Renaissance painters. The tips of the palmetto leaf radiate across the picture plane like a visible, unfolding wave of sound. Stella had moments of homesickness, when images of his homeland came to him as clearly as when he first arrived in America in 1896. Here, it is as if the Neapolitan song is reaching across the sea, bridging the distance between Stella's old home and his adopted country.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006