VITO COVELLI Italian / American, 1882–1958 A Lake, 1940 Oil on board. Signed lower right. Verso titled, signed, and dated. Framed.
20 x 24 inches; frame: 25 x 29 inches
ARTIST PROFILE: Vito Covelli (1882–1958) was an Italian-born landscape painter who transitioned from a background in electrical chemistry to becoming a notable figure in the American art scene. After beginning his art studies in Bari under Ugenti and later training with Kenyon Cox in New York City, Covelli established himself as a well-known painter whose work was exhibited throughout Manhattan in the early 1910s. In 1926, he and his wife, former opera star Claire Felice de Guine, moved to a rustic, "heavily wooded" estate in Barkhamsted, Connecticut, where they lived a simple life without modern amenities, dedicating themselves to painting, music, and poetry. Their home, which they dubbed a "National Rural Art Museum," housed hundreds of his works for visitors to admire. Covelli’s legacy was further cemented during the Great Depression when he joined the WPA Federal Arts Project, producing 125 landscape oil paintings that were distributed to public schools, hospitals, and military installations across Connecticut. Following his death in 1958, many of his paintings remained with his family at their historic West Hill Road residence.
