Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859-1933) is perhaps best known for the above painting that can be viewed at Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna.
Briefly, Corcos trained in Florence and Naples, spent time in Paris where he was friends with Giuseppe De Nittis, Giovanni Boldini along with many well-known French painters of the day. Then he returned to Italy where he spent the rest of his career. His English Wikipedia entry is here, but the French version has more detail. More about him can be found here.
Corcos' style was strongly representational, at times verging on photographic -- especially for the contrived scenes featuring pretty young ladies that probably provided a good income. His style did not change much over time, so the images below are arranged thematically.
The painting atop this post apparently was regarded as risqué for reasons not discernible today. But the idealized scene here is much moreso.
A fairly typical "paintre des jolies femmes" production.
On the other hand, some artists in the late 1800s such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas painted absinthe drinkers, while Corcos and others featured drug addicts.
Another of Corcos' edgy scenes.
"Tell me everything!" says one young lady to the other as the steamship sails away.
A jolie femme portrait.
Portrait of the artist's wife.
The man instrumental in creating modern Italy.
A fellow Italian painter. His painting style in these portraitist dramatically different from his jolie femme style.
This was painted during the 1920s and seems very slightly simplified, a barely perceptible nod to the modernist fashion of the times.
Maria, a Belgian princess, was the wife (of sorts) of Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia, who briefly reined in 1946 as Umberto II, the last king of Italy. This is the latest Corcos painting I noticed while image-searching.
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