The paintings on show in this room are all set in Alpino, a locality in the upper valley of Vergante, between Gignese and Mount Mottarone, set between Lake Maggiore and the Lake of Orta. The artist had built a small house here where he could spend long periods of withdrawal from city life with his wife, the noblewoman Corona Douglas Scotti della Scala di San Giorgio.
Painted between 1900 and 1905, in a particularly successful period for the artist, these works record episodes from his everyday family life, from the sphere of his most intimate affections.
That is what we see in The Funicular Railway is Passing and My Flowers, two works with the pronounced atmospheric luminosity of summer and a bright colour scheme; the first is set on the panoramic terrace of Bazzaro’s family villa, where a group of curious guests strain to catch sight of the funicular railway as it passes in the vegetation on the horizon.
The second, My Flowers, is set in the villa’s luxuriant garden, where a young, elegantly dressed lady’s small children are picking flowers for her, which she then gathers in a fold of her gown.
In these works related to the periods he spent at Alpino, Bazzaro also tackled a subject that was very much in vogue at the time: the figure of a single, melancholic woman, immersed in nature and absorbed in her thoughts.
Two splendid examples of this genre are At Alpino, in which the artist painted his wife while she was utterly absorbed in the autumnal landscape, capturing her as she gazed out in solitude at the waters of the lake, and Among the Hydrangeas, in which Corona is viewed in the foreground, sitting among the splendid hydrangeas in her garden, thoughtful but at peace.
Meanwhile, there is a completely different tone, more joyful and carefree, in his work Coquettes.