HENRY PARSONS RIVIÈRE (1811-1888)

THE GIRANDOLA ABOVE THE CASTEL SANT'ANGELO
Signed l.m.
Watercolour with bodycolour
55 x 68 cm
 
 
 
 
The Girandola was a fireworks display held in Rome which took place on Easter Monday and when a new pope was elected. The display was held at the Castel Sant'Angelo, the papal fortress that was originally built as the mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian. The word girandola refers to the revolving wheel from which the rockets were fired. A historical reconstruction of the Girandola firework display is still held every year on June 29 to celebrate the festival of Sts. Peter and Paul
 
 
Henry Parsons Riviere was born in Marylebone, the son of Daniel Valentine Riviere, a drawing-master, and was the younger brother of William and Robert Riviere, both of whom would also become artists. He was a student at the Royal Academy Schools, and apparently painted ‘rustic figures from life’ at the Artists’ Society at the Clipstone Street ‘Academy’. His earliest exhibited works include a copy after Rubens’ Triumph of Silenus, and these were exhibited at the Society of British Artists in 1832. Two years after this, Henry was elected a partial member of the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours (N.W.S.), though he never assumed full membership. Until 1865, Riviere’s output was dominated by the sort of genre scenes popular at the time, with various depictions of Irish life, tinged with gentle humour, among the majority of his exhibition pieces. Like his father, he also practised as an art teacher to supplement his income. 
 
Shortly after 1865, Henry travelled to Rome for the first time, and he remained here until the end of his life. The move effected a total change on the artist’s style and choice of subjects and, henceforth, the vast majority of the paintings he sent back to London to be exhibited were views of Rome and its environs. He was a prolific painter, and exhibited at the Royal Academy, British Institution, and the aforementioned S.B.A., to which he contributed more than 300 paintings in his lifetime. Riviere returned finally to England in 1884, and died at 26 St. John's Wood Road, London, on 9 May 1888.