Mid Century Italian Oil Painting of Riders on Horseback in Blue by Gian Rodolfo d'Accardi

Four riders pick their way through a wood of pale blue trunks, one in a yellow jacket, one in white, the rest half dissolved into the landscape around them. This is an original oil on canvas by Gian Rodolfo d'Accardi (1906 to 1993), the Palermo born painter who settled in Milan in 1925, exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1948 and spent much of the 1960s and 70s showing in New York. Horses and riders in woodland were his signature subject, painted again and again in a loose post impressionist style with flashes of expressionism, and this one is a fine example, signed d'Accardi at lower left.

The palette is what makes it. Almost the whole canvas sits in blues and soft greens, with the figures picked out in small hits of yellow, coral and white. It reads from across a room as a cool, atmospheric wash and rewards a closer look with all the layered brushwork and scumbled colour of a painter enjoying himself.

It comes in its gilt wood frame and behind glass, measuring 72 x 63 cm overall. The frame shows honest wear to the gilding at the corners and edges, which we rather like against the softness of the paint, and the canvas itself is in good order for its age.

We would hang it somewhere it can be the only thing on the wall. Over a white painted dresser, as we have it here, the blues sing against the pale wood. It would be equally happy above a bed in a room with plaster pink or ochre walls, where the warm tones would pull the little riders forward, or on a dark green study wall for a moodier, more masculine look. If you collect mid century European painting, or simply want one proper piece of art rather than three prints, this is the sort we would choose ourselves.

d'Accardi's work is held in Italian public collections and turns up regularly at Milanese auction houses, but it is still rare to find one framed and ready to hang in the UK.