Born in London into a well-known family of Neopolitan artists, Conrad Hector Raphael Carelli (1869–1956) was great-grandson of painter Settimio Carelli, follower of the style of Pompeo Battoni, in Apulia, Italy; grandson of Raffaele Carelli (1795–1864), painter of the School of Posillipo; and son of artist Gabriele Carelli (1821–1900) who moved from Italy to London, where he married an Englishwoman and Queen Victoria became one of his principal patrons.
Conrad Carelli studied in Paris at the Académie Julian in 1889, under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. The Carelli family wintered in Menton on the French Riviera, and Conrad's father Gabriele died there in 1900. For a while Conrad lived and exhibited at Menton.
Gabriele Carelli travelled regularly and extensively across Britain and Europe, and to North Africa and the Middle East. Conrad shared his father's love of travel and worked in a looser version of his father's style, producing gem-like watercolours, capturing the look and feel of local terrain and architecture.
