Provenance:
Private Collection, Auckland since c. 1960 This version of The Springtime of Life has never before been offered for public sale.

Another version of this painting is illustrated p. 102 Nerli - An Exhibition of Paintings & Drawings, Peter Entwisle, Michael Dunn & Roger Collins, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 1988
and
p. 57 Nerli - An Italian Painter in the South Pacific, Michael Dunn, Auckland University Press, 2005

Nerli painted a number of variations on this composition while he was in Australia and New Zealand. He first exhibited the subject in Sydney in 1887 with the title In Transgression, which suggests the immoral dimension of the behaviour of the peasant couple. The young man is making advances to the girl, who is neglecting the turkeys entrusted to her care. Her smiling face tells us that she is responsive to her lover's words and is not about to reject his ardent grasp of her arm. She is evidently being led astray. Such subjects were common in European painting of the late nineteenth century and Nerli undoubtedly sourced the composition in Italy before he left for the antipodes in 1885. There was a demand for Italian peasant subjects in New Zealand and Australia because they seemed exotic and picturesque. The painting is pitched in a high key and conveys well the heat of a hot Mediterranean day with bright sunshine, blue skies and the dust of the road between the toes of the carefree barefoot lovers. The turkeys can be seen as symbolising carnal desire unrestrained by higher moral values and considerations. The slightly risqué subject-matter would have been more acceptable from Signor Nerli, as he called himself, than from local painters, who rarely if ever attempted a work of this sort. As an Italian and a Catholic he would have been seen as not quite respectable in a Scottish settlement like Dunedin with its strong Protestant religious heritage. Nerli exhibited a painting of this title at the Otago Art Society's annual exhibition in 1894, which may have been this work or another version of the same subject. He sometimes exhibited the same works at different venues years after he had first painted them.

Text: p. 56 Nerli - An Italian Painter in the South Pacific, Michael Dunn, Auckland University Press, 2005