MARKET, ART AND HIGH SOCIETY AMONGST ENGLAND, GERMANY AND FRANCE
point of view. Remarkable is during this time the circulation of his works. His subjects are often recreated with variations (fig. 29-30) or replicated, sometimes even in an absolutely identical manner in every detail and in size, but rare are reproductions on newspapers and magazines. The artist, clever manager and curator of his public image, in fact, used to grant the right to publishing for a fee, proving himself evidently not interested in a mass distribution of the paintings, which he preferred to devote to a picked and selected elite.30 Interesting are, in this regard, even some clues provided by the press in relation to his paintings prices, which were to grow in direct proportion to his fame. In 1880 at the Melbourne Exhibition the painting Greek Temple, Paestum, near Salerno is sold for 100 pounds to J. F. Cadmore, who buys for the same price the sculpture Rebecca at the Well by Achille Albacini.31 Ten years later his prices are decidedly higher, as informs a long and detailed article that appeared in “The Morning Call” of San Francisco related to the exhibition of Charles Haseltine‘s collection organized at the San Francisco Art Association significantly entitled A Rare Exhibit. Half a Million Dollars Represented at the Art Association.32 The Haseltine Gallery of Philadelphia, as we have seen, offered for sale Corrodi’s works in 1874, in 1875 and finally in 1886.33 In the 1886 sale catalogue appears On the Seine at Grenouillere, evidently still unsold in 1891, when it is exposed in San Francisco. The work, estimated $ 4,000, is quoted second only to paintings by Edwin Landseer, Hans Makart, Léon Perrault and Florent
and hosts musical entertainments, such as a concert by Sgambati organized in 1887 in honor of Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg23; in 1890 he gives painting lessons in his studio to Princess Louise, daughter of the Princess of Wales24; in the summer of 1893 he resides in Florence to give painting lessons to the Princess of Wales, whose studies will be collected in an Album to which the German press devoted a long article25; in March 1899 the apartment at the Hotel Regina in Nice hosting Queen Victoria is decorated with paintings loaned by English consul Sir James Harris and by Spanish consul Gombart, including Corrodi’s The Gulf of Naples26; exceptional guide, in April of that year he accompanies to the Vatican Museums and at lunch at the Grand Hotel restaurant and, then, to the Caffè Aragno the Princess of Wales, disembarked incognito in Civitavecchia27; at the funeral of his father Salomon receives crowns of flowers from the President of the Accademia di San Luca, the Artistic International Association, the Deutscher Künstlerverein, the Princess of Wales, the Queen of Italy, the German Embassy pastor and the Swiss ambassador.28 His works are not only admired and appreciated for the finished workmanship and the compositional technique, but they are also amateurs’ subject of study: in 1910 Prince Henry of Battenberg sends a copy of the painting Egyptian Ruins to the annual exhibition of the I. W. Fine Arts Society.29 The 1890s therefore constitute the acme of Corrodi success also from the commercial
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