WHEN Giuseppe de Nittis, a 22-year old Italian artist, arrived in Paris in April 1867, he had no idea he would soon rub shoulders with the likes of acclaimed painters Degas and Manet or reputed writers such as Emile Zola or the Goncourt brothers.

De Nittis was an impatient youth. At age 17 he was expelled from the Instituto di Belle Arti in Naples for insubordination. He tried to establish himself as an independent painter, but the city's strict artistic hierarchy wouldn't have him. In desperation he moved to Paris. “This is my home and I am not going anywhere else!” he wrote to his parents in Italy.

De Nittis was also lucky in encountering soon after his arrival Gustave Caillebotte, a noted impressionist painter and a man with means enough to buy works by other contemporary painters. Caillebotte would become godfather to the talented young Italian who seemed to have a passion for open spaces. His early works show an incredible mastery of reflected light over grain fields, country roads, canal banks and seafronts.

Encouraged by Caillebotte, de Nettis would return to Italy following a violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1872. A series of works capture from different distances and perspectives not just the angry volcano spitting out flames and ash, but also people reacting to the extraordinary phenomenon — with wonderment, fascination or fright.

Once the Mount Vesuvius adventure over, de Nittis hurried back 'home' to Paris and plunged headlong into a new passion: street scenes. Going through some two dozen paintings belonging to this phase of his career, one is eerily conscious of two feelings: the young painter appearing pressed for time, as if he knows already he doesn't have much left, and his fascination with female beauty. With Paris landmarks in the background you see exquisitely well-dressed women crossing the streets, walking their dogs, riding, chatting with other women and sometimes alone, looking forlorn and apparently waiting for someone under a yellow rain of falling autumn leaves or on the banks of a frozen Seine.

A change of scene during the same period, around 1877-78, would bring de Nittis to London at the invitation of a rich admirer. His dozen or so paintings of Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, Bank of England, Piccadilly Circus and the Westminster show an uncanny grasp of details of a city that he hardly knew and whose light was very different from that of Paris.

All this while his work, done at a frenetic speed, sold. By the mid-1870s he was able to buy an apartment along the fashionable Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (today Avenue Foche) as well as a country residence in the lush green St Germain en Laye; he also bought fairly frequently works by impressionist painters like Monet, Degas and Manet. He was by now married to the daughter of a wealthy French businessman.

The young couple would live a busy social life and the lavish parties at their Paris residence would attract painters, writers and musicians. Among frequent visitors, apart from Zola, would be Edmund and Jules de Goncourt, two brothers who ruled over the Parisian literary scene at the time and whose magnificent portraits are part of the painter's legacy.

Two new interests would mark the final segment of the intriguing de Nittis legend; women's portraits against indoor backgrounds, and pastel. No other painter before him, with the exception of Degas, had used pastel on such large dimensions and the result is most often absolutely breathtaking.

Given the widely varied scope of work done by de Nittis in such a short time, the reputation of 'the ladies' painter' conferred upon him by his contemporaries appears a bit unfair. But his portraits of beautiful, elegant women in oil as well as in pastel rival any by the more reputed painters of his period.

A frequent subject during this final phase is Léontine, Giuseppe's French wife, who is often seen accompanied by their young son, Jacques. One of these paintings is Breakfast in the garden , completed at the end of 1883. It shows Léontine and Jacques at an al fresco breakfast table set under the shade of a tree on a bright summer morning.

In this scene from the garden of their country residence, Léontine stirs her coffee as she looks fondly at Jacques who is giving all his attention to the ducks by the pond. Most significantly, is the scarily premonitory note contained in the back of the vacant cane chair closest to the onlooker.

The fruit-juice glass and the coffee cup are empty; the napkin rumpled, as if the occupant of the seat had to get up in a hurry to seize the scene on canvas for eternity. That is what the painter did in this most captivating of his final works, treasuring not only the magical light of a bright summer day reflected on the silverware, but also all the mystery and affection he was inspired by at the moment.

Giuseppe de Nittis had a cerebral stroke a few days following the completion of Breakfast in the garden , dying at age 38. The Petit Palais museum at the Alexander III Bridge is rendering through end January a belated homage to this forgotten genius.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

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