Emilio Gola Italian, 1851-1923

Born in Milan in 1851, after studying at the Polytechnic, he was encouraged in his artistic pursuits by his father, Carlo, who entrusted him to study with the painter Sebastiano De Albertis. 

His style is influenced by numerous European trips for study and training, in particular to France, Great Britain and the Netherlands. 

During his stay in Paris, in 1868, he first came into contact with the Impressionists, whose influence is clearly evident in the artworks he created between 1885 and 1890. In 1879, he made his debut in Brera and, after a year, exhibited his first painting at the Paris Salon, where he exhibited again in 1882 and 1889.  

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Gola, who frequented the aristocracy of Lombardy, dedicated himself first to portraiture and then to landscapes, mostly of the Ligurian Riviera and the Venetian lagoon. 

After years dedicated to landscapes, mostly portraying the canals and countryside of Brianza, in 1880, Gola presented his first self-portrait at the Brera exhibition and at the Turin Page’s Head National Fine Arts Exhibition. With this artwork, the artist recalled echoes of Scapigliata painting and the search for a luminous vibration that dissolves the figure in the surrounding environment, accentuating the psychological penetration typical of all his portraits. 

Strongly oriented towards renewing and modernising figurative art, he participated, with other young artists, in various editions of the Munich Secession. 

in 1900, he won a silver medal at the Universal Exhibition for a female portrait that permanently shifted his artistic focus; from then, he devoted himself to painting nudes. 

During the war, he worked between the Ligurian Riviera and the Lido of Venice, specialising in seascapes with great formal synthesis and expressive intensity. 

He died in Milan in 1923.