GIOVANNI COSTA 
“ Sunrise at Bocca d’ Arno,” in the National Gallery; 
the “ Fiume Morto,” belonging to Mrs. Albert Rutson 
■ a romantic scene of wooded gorge, sleeping waters, 
and purple mountain; and Mr. Douglas Freshfield’s 
“ Autumn Morning in the Mountains of Carrara,” a 
view of the same hills veiled in white mist, with the 
rising sun faintly flushing the slopes and a single 
pine-tree standing out on the russet plain, waiting 
for the springtime that will not always tarry. 
In 1862 Costa went to Paris, where his works 
met with general admiration from the masters of 
the Fontainebleau school. Corot hailed him as a 
comrade, and embraced him in the name of Hobbema 
as the worthy successor of the great landscape-painters 
of old. He visited Rousseau at Barbizon, and con¬ 
versed with Millet, whose serious and noble character 
impressed him deeply. It was then, in the woods of 
Marlotte, that he painted his life-size figure of a nude 
nymph at the fountain, which he kept in his studio 
until he died, always altering and improving it. As a 
rule, it must be owned, Costa’s large figures were not 
successful, but when this “ Ninfa nel Bosco ” was ex¬ 
hibited, after his death, the Roman critics declared it 
to be the painter’s masterpiece. In 1863 Costa went 
to England at Leighton’s invitation, and the two 
friends together visited Mason in his Staffordshire 
home, and cheered that sorely tried artist in his 
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