no longer under contract to Goupil, achieved a success at the Salon with his painting Che freddo! (It's So Cold!) of 1874 (Private collection). In that same year he was invited to exhibit at the first Impressionist exhibition, held at Nadar's. The invitation came from Edgar Degas, who was a friend of several Italian artists residing in Paris, including Telemaco Signorini, Giovanni Boldini, and Federico Zandomeneghi. De Nittis was not accepted by all of the Impressionists and did not participate in their subsequent exhibitions. A trip to London resulted in a number of Impressionistic paintings. In 1875 De Nittis took up pastels, which became an important medium for him in his remaining years and which he helped popularize. Back in Paris, where his home was a favorite gathering place for Parisian writers and artists as well as for expatriate Italians, he executed pastel portraits of sitters including De Goncourt, Zola, Manet, and Duranty. He preferred pastels as the medium for his largest works, such as the triptych entitled Races at Auteuil (1881). De Nittis exhibited twelve paintings in the Exposition Universelle of 1878 and was awarded a gold medal. In that same year he received the Légion d’honneur. In 1884, at the age of 38, De Nittis died suddenly of a stroke at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His wife, the Parisian Léontine Lucile Gruvelle (married in 1869), donated his paintings to the town of Barletta, and they are now gathered in the Pinacoteca De Nittis in the Palace of the Marra in the hometown of the painter. Works by De Nittis are in many public collections, including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the British Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His paintings Return from the Races and The Connoisseurs are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. is holding a special exhibition of works by De Nittis from November 12, 2022 to February 12, 2023. A catalog was published to accompany the exhibition. Gallery References Sources Broude, Norma (1987). The Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Steingräber, Erich; Matteucci, Giuliano (1984). The Macchiaioli: Tuscan Painters of the Sunlight. New York: Stair Sainty Matthiesen Gallery. 1846 births 1884 deaths People from Barletta Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery 19th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Italian Impressionist painters 19th-century Italian male artists