Nicolino Calyo Biography & Paintings

Nicolino Calyo, an American nineteenth-century landscape painter, who was born in Naples brought the typical European style of art to the American scene, such as the View of New Orleans.

He studied scenery art and customs at the Naples Academy, where he learned Neoclassical, Italian, and Dutch scene styles of painting. Calyo left Italy in 1821.

He traveled and painted around Europe for the next several years. Calyo studied drawing in Malta from 1829 to 1832, then spent the following year in Granada, where his father had a position with the court of the Neapolitan-conceived Queen Christina.

Calyo departed Spain for America before the Carlist War in 1833, traveling first to the Canary and Cape Verde Islands before arriving in Baltimore the following year. Before departing for Philadelphia and, finally, New York, where he made his permanent residence in 1835, he conducted exhibitions of his large-scale European compositions.

Nicolino Calyo in New York

On December 16 and 17, 1835, Calyo arrived in New York, prepared to create viewpoints on New York's tremendous style, a few of which were reproduced as prints by William Bennett in 1836.

Calyo also painted other depictions of urban laborers, merchants, and other road figures in the style of Jacques Callot over the next few years, and a collection of these was published in 1840 as the Cries of New York.

Nicolino Calyo in New Orleans

Calyo also used watercolor and gouache for his compositions. In 1837, Calyo traveled to New Orleans to present his scene of the New York fire, and in 1852, he returned to show his diorama of the Mexican War.

His panoramic view of New Orleans, accurately depicted, captures the city's dense design, holy locations, and other identifiable tourist attractions, making it a valuable geological record of the city in the mid-nineteenth century.

The staffage figures on the stream banks in the frontal area, like the top-hatted respectable men one of whom motions toward the steam-and-boats, give Calyo's work extraordinary quality and an enthusiastic human nearness, similar to the top-hatted respectable men one of whom motions toward the steam-and-boats.

Calyo's skilled use of watercolor and gouache captures the light, shading, and air of the scene.

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Through the 1850s, Calyo, together with two of his children, John and Hannibal, and his child-in-law, Giuseppe Allegri, continued to paint beautiful works. According to available works, he appears to have done less painting in the years leading up to his death in 1884.

Throughout his life, Calyo remained cosmopolitan and global in terms of context and governmental issues. He assisted prominent European outcasts, including Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III) and Guiseppe Garibaldi, the popular Italian soldier and nationalist, in his New York house.

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Nicolino Vicompte Calyo Paintings

View of the Great Fire in New York

View of New York from Williamsburg

New York and Brooklyn from Williamsburgh

Fisherman and wife by the shore

View of the City of New York and Governors Island Taken from Brooklyn Heights on the Morning after the Conflagration.

View of the City of New York and the Marine Hospital Taken from Wallabout.

Arcadian Landscape

The Burning of the Caroline

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