Father – Oskar Borisovich Wiesel (Wiesel Oscar Sigismund), born in Russia in 1826, graduated from Prince Bezborodko's Gymnasium of Higher Learning in Nizhyn (nowadays Nizhyn Gogol State University), worked in the Russian Ministry of Finance, repeatedly visited Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris on behalf of their Majesties tsars Alexander II and Alexander III.

Her father Fransois de Pointin who had family roots from the French province of Picardy was born at Louis XVIII's court in exile in Warsaw.

He was notable for building the silver iconostasis of the Kazan Cathedral (St. Petersburg) and was awarded the Order of St. Anna by graf Yuliy Pompeevich Litte (ital., Giulio Renato de Litta Visconti Arese).

Subsequently, he proceeded his education in Munich at Alexander von Wagner's studio, there he mastered the drawing technique typical for this school, which includes the well-defined outline and highly detailed image.

It was Cormon who showed Wiesel new graphic methods that became a basis of his impressionistic picture technique that relied not on the outline but on treatment of light and shade.

At the beginning of the 20th century Emil Wiesel performed a portrait series of his eminent contemporaries: graf Vladimir Kokovtsev, academician Alexander Karpinsky, astronomer Sergey Glazenap, artist Ilya Repin, physician Gundobin N.P., singer Leonid Sobinov, ballet dancers Marie Petipa and Galina Ulanova, composers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Ilya Glazunov and others.

A particular place in his heritage is given to numerous pictures performed in his impressionistic manner reflecting his love for St.Petersturg and its surroundings: impressions on his events, journeys and meetings with various people.

A part of Wiesel's documents, correspondence and pictures are kept by the Academy of Arts, the Bibliotheca named after Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, and the St. Petersburg History Museum.

During the revolution Emil Wiesel evacuated the Academy of Arts Museum's collections to Moscow in order to save the masterpieces, and later returned them back to Pertograd (St.Petersburg).

Despite financial and living difficulties, Emil Wiesel and Vera Sholpo, both artists, continued creating portraits and landscapes, now on the Central Asian plot.