Giovanni Fattori was born in Leghorn on 6 September 1825 and, as a boy, he began working for his step-brother Rinaldo, showing a precocious passion and undoubted talent for drawing.  At 15, his father Giuseppe sent him to the painter Giuseppe Baldini for lessons.  In 1846, Fattori moved to Florence where he studied for some months with Giuseppe Bezzuoli and then enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts.  His rather precarious economic conditions did not stop him from regularly attending courses.  Attracted by the ideals of the Risorgimento, in 1848 he joined the Partito d’Azione (Action Party), distributing their clandestine leaflets, but not actively taking part in the revolutionary risings.  The next year he was in Leghorn at the time it was besieged by the Austrians, a tragic experience that fed his patriotism as well as his moral and artistic sensibility. 

Fattori read mostly historical novels, from which he drew important iconographic ideas. It was a period of artistic research carried out in solitude, far from school.  He was among the first patrons of the Caffé Michelangiolo in Florence. 

Fattori initially stayed on the fringe of discussions by the progressist painters (shortly afterward, known as the “Macchiaioli”), but he was influenced by them.  In 1852, he left the Academy and began a career that forced him to earn a living.  With a series of lithographic illustrations for the newspapers, he made his debut in graphics and, attracted by the idea of painting from life, he did numerous portraits of family members and landscapes. 

In the summer of 1859, he portrayed from life, some French soldiers encamped in the Cascine. They were his early experiments in using spots of color, or macchia, to create his paintings, excursions into a particular realism that found new energy from a meeting with the Roman painter Nino Costa. Following Costa’s advice, Fattori participated in the Ricasoli competition, where he won with his sketch of The Italian Camp after the Battle of Magenta in which his fresh interpretation of the news stands out.  It is the period when his works are focused on military subjects.

With his experiments in the use of macchia (spots), the scenes from life were given freer rein and he moved towards a growing technical independence that Fattori applied above all to landscape painting and to themes of humble daily labor, authentic sources of inspiration.  At the age of 35, he married Settimia Vannucci in July 1860, who died of tuberculosis in 1867.  His wife’s illness forced the family to leave the unhealthy climate of Florence for Leghorn where the artist painted various portraits.  Meanwhile, the political atmosphere had changed.  The new Kingdom of Italy (1861) had not met the expectations and ideals of the Risorgimento. That bitter disappointment together with the death of Settimia had a disheartening effect on Fattori that led to a sad and negative mood from which his friendship with Diego Martelli delivered him.  Fattori stayed at Martelli’s large estate in Castiglioncello for several months and later, he went to stay there frequently and to paint the Maremma landscape.

In 1869, Fattori received a post as professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.  In the years that followed, he began to do his first engravings.  One of his most famous paintings, the Cavalry Charge is from 1872, the year in which he went to Rome for the first time. 

In 1875, he also decided to go to Paris, a culturally disappointing journey.  His meetings with French artists – and, in particular, with the Impressionists – left him unimpressed.  Meanwhile, his painting of the Horse Market in Montanara Square won a prize at the Philadelphia International Exhibition – a work later lost when the steamer Europa sank as it was returning to Italy. 

He worked on the Battle of Custoza until about 1880, the year in which the Institute of Fine Arts in Florence named Fattori an honorary professor.  The approach to military themes and the epic events of the Risorgimento changed; enthusiasm was now drowned in regret and resignation. 

Fattori went ever more frequently to the Maremma, the countryside becoming his favorite theme.  By now in middle age, the painter met Amalia Nollemberg, a young woman with whom he fell in love and with whom he had a long relationship; the latter was a source of much criticism and so later he broke off the relationship.

While Fattori was a guest on Prince Tommaso Corsini’s estate, La Marsiliana, in the Maremma, he discovered the butteri, Maremman cowboys, of whom he made various studies.  In those years, he also created his first important engravings (in 1884, Cromo-Lito Pistoiese printed an edition with twenty lithographs), among which is one inspired by his Cavalry Charge painting.

In 1885, he began a relationship with Marianna Bigazzi, a widow; they were married six years later.  The following year, the Academy of Florence gave him the chair of Professor of the specialization courses.  These recognitions were not enough to reward the new creative stimuli, causing a growing desire in Fattori to withdraw into himself. 

In 1887, the world of the butteri debuted at the Venice National Exhibition with three paintings:  Repose, Branding of the Colts and The Sheep Jump.  In 1889, Fattori exhibited some etchings at the First Fine Arts Exposition in Bologna.  For the occasion, the local Academy named him an honorary member.  In 1890, he received special mention at the World’s Fair in Paris and a gold medal at the international exhibition in Cologne.

The last decade of the century was distinguished by great productivity.  Fattori produced many etchings and had participated regularly in the Venice Biennial since its beginning in 1895.  He also received a number of official recognitions:  a gold medal at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair for his etching Oxen and Cart (Maremma); he was asked to serve on Rome’s National Copperplate Engraving Art Commission in 1901; and his body of engravings was published in a special edition in 1903. 

In May of that year his second wife Marianna also died.  In 1904 he was awarded a silver medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair.   In 1907, at the age of 82, he was married for the third time to 62-year-old Fanny Martinelli who would leave him a widower only one year later.  On 30 August, 1908 Giovanni Fattori died in a classroom at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.