Joseph Capecchi Mountain Lake with Fisherman, Oil on Wood Panel, Signed, c. 1940–1970

The Piece

A tall pine stands at the left edge of a quiet mountain lake, the water opening out behind it toward snow-touched peaks, and down on the rocks a small figure sits fishing. It's a wide, calm picture painted in warm olive, umber, gold and soft gray-blue, with the trees and grasses built up in textured strokes and the far shore left soft in the haze. Signed J. Jr. Capecchi at the lower left, it comes from the Capecchi family of St. Paul, Minnesota, a Florentine family of sculptors and decorators whose work fills the Cathedral of Saint Paul.

History & Provenance

Joseph Angelo Capecchi was born in Florence in 1889 and came to St. Paul in 1906, at seventeen, to carve decorative work for the new Cathedral of Saint Paul with the Giuliani Statuary Company. He rose to become president of the St. Paul Statuary Company, and over fifty years he sculpted the Cathedral's fourteen bronze Stations of the Cross and its Selby and Dayton entrances, set the colour scheme of its dome, and made the figure of St. Thomas Aquinas over Aquinas Hall at the University of St. Thomas.

He was a painter too. The family album keeps a photograph of him at an easel outdoors at Crooked Lake, Wisconsin in 1940, painting a framed lake scene much like this one, and he painted in oils into his eighties. His eldest son, Joseph E. Capecchi, known as Joe Jr., worked beside him in the family trade and later gilded the Quadriga on the Minnesota State Capitol with his brother Paul. The Jr. in the signature points to that household of painters and carvers. The full record, with sources, is on our Joseph Capecchi artist page.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is a lodge painting with a lineage. The wide format wants a long wall: over a sofa, a bed, a console or a dining sideboard, where the lake has room to stretch out. The earthy palette sits easily with wood, linen, leather and stone, and the little fisherman gives you something new to find every time you walk past. It's a quiet picture from a family that spent a century making beautiful things for St. Paul.

To care for it, keep it out of direct sun and away from fireplaces, heating vents and humid rooms. Dust the frame lightly with a soft, dry brush, and leave any cleaning of the paint surface to a conservator.