Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Melbourne
thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
Victorian Artist's Society: Catalogue of Winter Exhibition, Grosvenor Galleries, Melbourne, 4 May 1889, cat. 65

LITERATURE
'Social', Melbourne Punch, Melbourne, 9 May 1889, p. 13
'Winter Exhibition of the Victorian Artists', The Argus, Melbourne, 15 May 1889, p. 9


Born in Florence, Ugo Catani was the son of a lawyer and initially studied law before discovering his passion for painting. In 1881, he enrolled at the Academy of Art in Florence, where he studied alongside fellow artist Girolamo Nerli. The two travelled extensively — to Marseilles via Madagascar, Mauritius, and Bourbon — before arriving in Melbourne in November 1885.

Upon settling in Melbourne, Catani became active in the city's burgeoning art scene. He and Nerli shared a studio on Collins Street with Walter Withers and Portuguese-born Arthur Loureiro, where they exhibited their Florentine paintings alongside sketches by other Italian artists. Around this time, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, and Charles Conder had broken away from the conservative Victorian Academy of Arts to form the Australian Artists' Association (AAA). By 1888, the Association had reconciled with the Victorian Academy, leading to the formation of the Victorian Artists' Society (VAS). Catani was a founding member and Executive Committee member of the Association, and later served as a Council Member of the Society.

Catani exhibited regularly in Melbourne's major art exhibitions. His Collins Street, Rainy Weather was included in the 1887 winter exhibition of the Association and is now held in the collection of the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. Another notable work, Lover's Walk, Mount Macedon, was shown at the Society's Winter Exhibition in March 1890 and is now part of the National Gallery of Victoria collection. In May 1889 the present work, Lost Your Ribbon, Sir appeared in the Society's winter exhibition alongside celebrated masterpieces such as Arthur Streeton's Golden Summer, Eaglemont and Frederick McCubbin's Down on His Luck.

Best known for his portraits, Catani's technical mastery is particularly evident in Lost Your Ribbon, Sir, a small-scale work of striking precision. Eschewing the traditional, studio-bound, patron-commissioned portrait, this painting offers a vivid glimpse into Melbourne's 19th-century street life. Set against a backdrop of boom-era architecture, it captures a spontaneous exchange between a street urchin and a foot-passenger, an evocative moment reflecting the social fabric of late 19th-century Melbourne. The composition reveals Catani's sensitivity to class distinctions, period mannerisms, and the subtleties of human interaction, while the playful title adds an additional layer of narrative intrigue.

In December 1893, Catani left Melbourne for Hobart, en route to New Zealand, before eventually settling in England, where he gained recognition as a painter of miniatures. Though his time in Melbourne was brief, his body of work remains a valuable visual record of the city's urban and cultural evolution in the late 19th century. His landscapes were once praised as "admirable memoranda in colour of some of the evanescent phenomena of nature" — a sentiment equally apt for his documentation of Melbourne's fleeting street scenes and layered expressions of social realism.1

1. The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, Vol 29, 1903, pp. 290