In Midwinter

In 1909, Carcano showed this painting and another landscape the same size, Summer in the High Mountains (Venice, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro), at the 8th Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia. Datable to the year of the Venice exhibition, In Midwinter and Summer in the High Mountains depict two different views of glaciers in the Upper Engadin Valley (canton of Graubündigen) in the Swiss Alps. The Cariplo Collection painting depicts, in the foreground, an expanse of snow lit by the sun and a cluster of fir trees beyond which the valley opens up, flanked on either side by the glaciers of the Bernina Massif, with Mount Scerscen in the background. The composition, constructed through a sequence of planes that gradually shift out of focus, reveals marked similarities to photographic language in which Carcano always showed great interest. The subject, possibly a tribute to Giovanni Segantini on the 10th anniversary of his death in 1909, was one of the most popular in mountain landscape painting, which Lombardy artists had already taken up in the 1890s. As part of his ongoing research in the ambit of Lombard Naturalism, Carcano depicts the snow on the trees and the mountains with remarkable skill, creating an almost tactile effect by applying thick dabs of pure colour to the untreated canvas. Moreover, the vibrant colour combinations are also to be found in other canvases executed by the painter in the mountains on the Swiss border, such as Glacier at Cambrena (private collection) exhibited at the 2nd Brera Trienniale of 1897 or The Matterhorn (c. 1890, Milan, Galleria d’Arte Moderna).