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The house of the Morbelli family in Colma, a charming corner of Monferrato, called "Villa Maria" in honour of the painter's wife, has always been a unique place for Angelo Morbelli. In this house he has written and received lots of correspondence.


 

Villa Maria

Painting the landscape has become the painter's favourite objective. Many works are set in "Villa Maria", the splendid house-atelier, where he loved to capture the geranium pots in the background of the gentle hills of Monferrato. This is the "new way of painting towards the Division", visually recalled by portraits of the artists: Segantini, Pellizza, Longoni, Bistolfi and Quadrelli , immortalized by the brush of Giovanni Sottocornola.
 

Angelo Morbelli with his friends in his atelier in Villa Maria
 

This picturesque house has been the reference point for an extraordinary group of distinguished guests from Casale, including Leonardo Bistolfi and Francesco Negri (who has taken the pictures of the atelier), and famous artists and writers, such as the close friend Pellizza da Volpedo or Giovanni Cena or the British Samuel Butler and his biographer Henry Festing Jones.
Angelo Morbelli was born in Alessandria on the 18th July 1853, and he died in Milan on the 7th November 1919.

Angelo Morbelli with his wife and sons