Augusto Corelli (rome 1853 - Id., 1918)

Augusto CORELLI (Rome 1853 - id., 1918)
Fishermen in the Bay of Naples
Signed in white lower right
Watercolor on paper, 34.5 x 50.5 cm.

The ARTIST
He was born in Rome, the son of Eugenio Corelli and Mary Ann Parry (born 1822 in Lugwardine,
Herefordshire, England). Auguste is the fifth of six children: Edward, Philip,
Clement, Julia and Judith. He was artistically trained at the Accademia de San Luca in Rome, where he
graduated at the age of eighteen. He was a pupil of the Neapolitan painter Achille
Guerra. In Rome, he attended the Academy of the Giggi Margutta, which had been founded as a
model for the study of the truth of the human figure and was at the time a meeting place
for the most famous artists, including foreigners.

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In 1879, he moved to Paris, where he stayed for a few months, finding an environment
adapted to his artistic vision. In fact, Corelli he was particularly drawn to landscape and the
rural mountain world.
On his return to Italy, to Rome, he set out to explore Lazio and Abruzzo in search of
subjects that inspired his artistic sensibility in the company of his pupil the painter Domenico
Pennacchini. In his memoirs Corelli says he was captivated by the beauty of the inhabitants and
landscapes of the village of Anticoli Corrado perched on a cliff, he decided to stop at the
river Aniene opposite the village, and recruited models for his paintings there. In Rome, he enthusiastically
told his artist friends about the country he had discovered. A few years later, a large art colony was established here. Corelli was the first to build a
real art studio in Anticoli, as recounted by the painter Orazio Amato. The same Amato composed
an inscription engraved on a marble plaque affixed to the study's facade: "Cui premier
arrisit sylvestris horum montium poesis, Augustus Corelli, citoyen romain Hanc domum artis
cultui sacram 1884, posuit". This building was demolished in 1950 to make way for a municipal
road.
In 1881, he joined the Society of Watercolorists. Augusto Corelli is among the first
Italian artists to discover the environment of Anticoli Corrado. His watercolors are much
appreciated. He married a local model, Emilia Meddi, with whom he would have four children, the
first, Corrado, a sculptor and the second, Filiberto, born in Anticoli (1886-1969), who was also
a painter.
Augusto Corelli exhibited in Turin in 1880, in Milan in 1881, in Rome in 1883, again in Turin
in 1884 and received the silver medal at the 1889 Universal Exhibition.
The Civic Museum of Modern Art in Anticoli Corrado preserves Augusto Corelli's
Piazza delle Ville, painted in 1884, and bequeathed by his heirs.