G. P. Nerli

Girolamo Pieri Pecci Ballati Nerli (21 February 1860 – 24 June 1926), was an Italian-born painter who worked in Australia and New Zealand in the late 19th century, influencing the art scenes of both countries.

In Australia, he is noted for influencing Charles Conder of the Heidelberg School movement, and in New Zealand, as an early teacher of Frances Hodgkins.

He migrated to Australia in 1885, first settling in Melbourne, where he shared a studio with fellow Italian Ugo Catani and the Portuguese-born Artur Loureiro.

He caused a sensation there later that year with his exhibition of paintings of bacchanalian orgies, and at an 1888 show his portrait of actress Myra Kemble attracted much attention.

Conder subsequently became a leading member of the impressionistic Heidelberg School movement alongside Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton.

He taught Frances Hodgkins, inspired O'Keeffe and reportedly had an affair with Grace Joel, a young woman artist he may also have known in Melbourne.

Its life classes employing a professional nude model were so successful that the government run Dunedin School of Art had to hire Nerli for the same purpose.

Nerli and his wife returned to Europe in 1904 where the artist spent the rest of his life, struggling against declining fortunes, between London and Nervi, Genoa in Italy.

The Sitting (1889) is worthy of James Tissot, and Nerli's lost work, The Ascension (c.1887) was a technical tour de force anticipating aspects of 20th-century art.

in the collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery is a minor masterpiece, brilliantly evoking the ambivalence of adolescence.