GUSTAVO SIMONI PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY
GUSTAVO SIMONI
Italian, 1846-1926
BIOGRAPHY
Gustavo Simoni was born in Rome. From 1861 until 1866 he studied at the Accademia de San Luca where his teachers were Salvatore Betti, Giuseppe Ferrari and Enrico Tarenghi. By 1875, Simoni had become one of the first members of the Società degli Acquarellisti, founded by Ettore Roesler Franz and Nazzareno Cipriani.
Simoni traveled extensively during the late 1870s and early 1880s, visiting France and Spain, but primarily North Africa, where he spent time in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. For a significant portion of this period, the artist was based in a house in the Algerian town of Tlemcen. There he was visited by friends and fellow artists from Rome and devoted his time to producing numerous studies of the people and architecture of the region. The American painter Frederick Arthur Bridgman was among the group of Orientalists who spent extended periods of time in Tlemcen, similarly finding it to be a rich source of subject matter for their art.
While continuing his travels to North Africa, Gustavo Simoni also became a fixture in the art scenes of both Paris, where he had a studio, and Rome, where he opened a school for Orientalist painting. In 1886, Simoni exhibited two Algerian subjects at the Società degli Amatori e Culture di Belle Arti in Rome. And in 1889, the artist was awarded a gold medal in Paris for his monumental painting depicting the burning of the palace of Persepolis.
Museum Collections:
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN
Dahesh Museum of Art, New York
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
