Giochi in riva al lago (o anche Giorno di Festa)

More than a final work, this appears to be a study or note for constructing a composition around the boldly foreshortened image of the point of dark land projecting onto the water. The black strip of land on which the boat is drawn up is extended in the silvery light of the lake. A group of children – three little girls and two boys – are running towards the water. One boy has fallen to the ground and lies among a constellation of flowers that form a vivid contrast to the stern and rocky shore. The second boy, farther off, advances towards the boat. Two of the girls are shown from behind, a visual choice that the artist borrowed from Sorolla and Zorn, masters he encountered in Venice in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the first Biennali of the 1890s. The third girl turns her amused face towards the boy whom she has pushed to the ground.
The scene illustrates the children’s play, their festive running, as suggested by the girls’ garments, undulating and puffed up by air. It is an action scene, and in fact the study of movement was characteristic of Tito’s artistic investigation from the 1890s onwards, giving a new and modern distinctive character to his interpretation of realism.