Giuseppe De Nittis was born in Barletta on 25th February 1846, from one family of rich land owners. To Barletta, when still it was a child, De Nittis began to take lessons of painting from Giambattista Calò, master of Neapolitan school, which they give endured noticed the extraordinary dowries of the student, and never did not lack to encourage it. It had 15 years when he decided to move to Naples and he entered to the Academy of Fine Arts.
However it was discovered interested to the slight knowledge and academic practices little, tied to a conception of the art that it considered "retriva and conformista". The attitude of De Nittis on comparisons of the tradition, forced him the expulsion from the Academy for indiscipline. To paint could not be a mere exercise of style. The sincerity was the characteristic that marked exemplarily the pictorial production of De Nittis. The love for the painting en plein air, as an example, made yes that, in 1864, to the single ones 17 years, De Nittis founded the "Portici's School" to other young painters. The year 1867 was a very important year for De Nittis; the sculptor and friend Adrian Cecioni introduced some painter's works (Attraversata lungo gli Appennini and Nevicata) to the Promotrice of Florence, which provoked deep admiration between the Macchiaioli. To 21 years, De Nittis was moved to Paris. In France it found fortune and love. "If I was remained in Italy, I would not be little that today they are. It is to Paris that I must my reputation". In France De Nittis it made precious acquaintances with art dealers of the bore of Adolphe Goupil, which cured the "commerce" of its works. Thanks to the Cecioni, taken to paint subjects drawn from the real life.
To Paris, De Nittis became "the historian of the custom of its time". It wanted to paint the places in which the life of that dynamics society was carried out and in increase, let alone the faces of its protagonists. Between the preferred subjects of its works slow combustion stoves, the women. Women who it observed, knew and loved. Between they Léontine Gruville, its future spouse, than De Nittis portrayed many times over and to which the city of Barletta will always remain in order recognizing. In fact, it is thanks to its sensibility and its deep love for the husband, than great part of the artistic production of De Nittis it is found in its country born them. De Nittis often exposed its works to the "Salon" temple of haute the cultures, but its production (anything but conformist) did not lack to provoke the interest of impressionist. These invited to expose it some of its pictures in the gallery from same they prepared on Boulevard des Capucines. De Nittis accepted but soon it repented. In fact, this choice, than it cost the breach of contracted its with Goupil, was not compensated from an income to full load title it of the painter in the circle of the impressionists, which did not tolerate the distance that it wanted to maintain, from the conceptions and basic rules of the movement. Disappointed and made bitter, determined De Nittis to move itself to London. Here it had important and fruitful contacts with some businessmen, than became its patrons and they concurred it to express its art in all freedom. De Nittis died in 1884, to the single ones 38 years, demolished from a congestion celebrates. It left an extraordinary memory of himself in who knew it, and an immense artistic patrimony, that it continues to hearten the mind of who comes near to its painting, in order to know it, to study it or simply in order it is made to bewitch from it.