Altamura, Jean

Biography in relation to Skagen

Article in Athens News Guide, friday 8. april 2011 by Christy Papadopoulou

Of Greek decent, Florence-born painter Ioannis Altamouras, whose exquisite "Port of Copenhagen" paninting is part of the National Gallery's permanent collection, only lived to be 26.

Art critics and researchers of his work belive that had he enjoyed a longer life, he may have well stood amongst impressionist painters of international calibre.

A legendary family

The fascinating history of Altamouras' family tree springs to life through subsections on the painter's mother, Eleni, his father Francesco and his brother Alexandros.

Elini was the daughter of Ioannis Boukouras, who had provided ships for the Greek Revolution of Independence in 1821. To bypass the admissions ban painting academies had on female artists, Eleni impersonated a man and enrolled at Napoli's Fine Arts Academy under the name Chryssinis Boukouras.

There she met her husband-to-be Francesco Saverio Altamura, who was a central figure of the Neapolitan struggle of 1848 for Italian independence and a fine painter himself inspired by the revolutionary ideals which dominated Europe throughout the 19th century. Following her divorce, Eleni, a mother of three, returned to Greece and continued painting in a windmill in Ilissos that served as both her home and workshop.

Many of Eleni's paintings, which were kept at the family mansion on Spetses, have notsurvived. It is said she burned her paintings during af fit of grief after the death of her children Ioannis and Sofia from tuberculosis. Another theory has it that her paintings were destroyed by her descendants during a house cleaning.

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Also a painter, Eleni's younger child, Alexandros, who had stayed back in Tialy with his father, gained recognition in his lifetime but fell into obscurity after his dead. Pleasant to the eye, unaffected and bright, his paintings ... enede up being recieved by ruthless critics as common, quaint and pretentious.

A short-lived talent

Ioannis took his first lessons in paintings from his mother Eleni before he joined Nikiforos Lytras' class in Greece. His first painting was commissioned by King George I, who was so impressed by the young painter's talent that he sent him to study on scholarship at the Copenhagen Royal Academy.

Altamouras' interest in maritime painting, which was displayed from an early age, was consolidated during his stay in Denmark, where hen studied 17ht-century Dutch painters and was influenced by the innovative seascape painters of the Royal Academy.

Sailing ships, steamboats and lighthouses are pictured against tranquil waters or rough seas, the background changing accordingly from a soothing blue tao an ominous, almost black, variation.

The detailed drawing in his paintings points to a thorough knowledge of ships and boats, part of which was acquired during his travels around Europe with the Danish Royal Navi. Wheter he painted a boat caught up in a storm or sketched a volcanic explosion on the island of Santorini, Altamouras was preoccupied with natural phenomena and their dramatic appeal. His paintings stand out for their exceptionally low skies and the predominance of nature, sea and light, key motifs in impressionistic painting.

Ioannis Altamouras mainly painted en plein air, a regular practice of the so-called Skagen community of artists with which he was involved during his stay in northern Denmark. The tiny fishing village at the northernmost tip of the Jutland peninsula was a popular destination for Danish painters and artists from the greater Scandinavian region.

He spent his last summer in Denmark, in 1876, at the vacation home of his friend from the academy Michael Ancher (Note: this is not correct. M.A. didn't have a home of his own in Skagen until 1880 when he married Anna Brøndum and they moved into "The Garden House"); the daily life of Skagen fishermen featured prominently in his compositions of the time. In his memoirs, Ancher referred to 1876 as the "Year of Altamuras"

Upon his return to Spetses the year after, Ioannis, whose health was deteriorating due to tuberculosis, would continue to paint Danish seascapes out of memory.

In 1876, the year of his death, two of his paintings were exhibited at the Exposition Universselle Internationale in Paris.