La Gardienne de Dindons
by Luigi Chialiva

Born 1842, in Castano (Ticino); died 1914, in Paris.

Painter (gouache), watercolourist, pastellist, draughtsman. Genre scenes, landscapes, landscapes with figures, mountainscapes, animals.
Chialiva was a pupil of Semper at the Zurich polytechnic, of Mancini at the school of art in Milan and of Ferdinand Heilbuth in Paris. In 1868 he was awarded first prize by the Mylins foundation for an animal tableau. He came to Paris in around 1872, two years later settling in Écouen.

Before 1874 he stayed in England on several occasions. Following his marriage, he settled in France and exhibited at the Salon, then at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, of which he was an associate member, becoming a full member in 1912. He had also trained as an architect, but above all as a chemist, and it was this that enabled him to elaborate a technique for fixing the pigments in pastels. His knowledge of pictorial techniques enabled him to advise his friend, Degas, on the restoration of the Portrait of the Bellelli Family, which had been affected by damp. His meticulous, balanced compositions with a Corot-style depiction of light have a certain spontaneity.

Museum and Gallery Holdings

Paris (former Mus. du Luxembourg): Turkey Keeper
Rome (Gal. Nazionale d'Arte Moderna): L'Incontro
Sheffield: Landscape with Livestock Grazing