Girolamo Nerli (1860–1926), whose full name was Girolamo Pieri Pecci Ballati Nerli, was born on 21 February 1860 in Siena, Italy, into an aristocratic family. He studied art in Florence, under Antonio Ciseri and Giovanni Muzzioli, and was influenced by the Macchiaioli, the Tuscan painters who worked in patches of light and colour.
In 1885 Nerli emigrated to Australia, first to Melbourne and then to Sydney, where he influenced the young Charles Conder and the Heidelberg School. In 1889 he visited Dunedin for the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, and from 1893 he lived and worked in New Zealand, where he taught Frances Hodgkins. In 1892 he travelled to Samoa and painted Robert Louis Stevenson, in the portrait now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, still regarded as one of the most searching portraits of the writer.
Nerli returned to Europe in the early 1900s and spent his last years between London and Nervi, near Genoa, struggling with declining fortunes. He died in Nervi on 24 June 1926, childless.