Umberto Veruda

He was introduced to the art of painting by a local artist, originally from Bologna, named Raffaele Astolfi (1829-1900); known for portraits in the Academic style.

In 1884, at the age of sixteen, he went to Munich, where he was able to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts, where his fellow Triestini, Carlo Wostry and Isidoro Grünhut, were also studying.

In 1887, he visited Paris for the first time and spent six months there drawing, rather than painting oils, with William Adolphe Bouguereau and Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury.

His close friend, the author Italo Svevo, offered him the hospitality of his home in Burano, where he met with the painters Italico Brass [it] and Pieretto Bianco (1875-1937); old acquaintances from Paris.

Veruda also appears as a character (the sculptor Stefano Balli) in Svevo's novel, Senilità; translated into English under the title As a Man Grows Older.