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Nerli, G(irolamo) P(ieri) B(allati), Marchese
(b Siena, 21 Feb 1860; d Nervi, 24 June 1926 or Siena, 11 March 1947). Italian painter, active in Australia and New Zealand. He studied in Florence at the Accademia di Belle Arti under Antonio Ciseri and Giovanni Muzziolo (1854–94). He also responded to the art of the Scapigliati group and the Macchiaioli. In 1885 he travelled to Australia, where he worked and exhibited in Melbourne and Sydney. He met leading Australian artists including Charles Conder, whose early paintings share affinities with his style. Nerli exhibited portraits and figure compositions, though his reputation rests on small-scale sketches of contemporary subjects in and around Sydney and Melbourne; these are painted in a fluid impressionistic manner, such as the Beach at Port Melbourne from the Foreshore, St Kilda (c. 1888; Melbourne, N.G. Victoria). In 1892 Nerli visited Samoa, where he painted several portraits of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (e.g. Edinburgh, N.G.; New Haven, CT, Yale U., Beinecke Lib.). Nerli went to New Zealand in 1889 to exhibit works at the Dunedin South Seas Exhibition. He returned to Dunedin in 1893, setting up a studio and taking private pupils. In 1895 he was appointed teacher of painting at the Dunedin School of Art. Among his pupils was Frances Hodgkins. Nerli had an important influence on Australian and New Zealand art through the introduction of modern subjects, plein-air figure and landscape painting and Impressionist technique. He moved to London in 1904 and spent his last years at the Villa Durallo at Nervi, where he died according to one of the two death certificates that exist. His work is represented in the major public collections in Australia and New Zealand.
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