 Her father Thomas Medwin was a minor literary figure in Byron's circle, the author of "Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron" and of "The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley"; Medwin was a second cousin on both parents' side of Shelley.Girolamo studied art in Florence under Antonio Ciseri and Giovanni Muzzioli and was a younger member of the Italian Macchiaioli school, the 'patch painters', an Italian movement anticipating French Impressionism.He went to Australia in 1885 spending time in Melbourne and Sydney where he was an associate of Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton and an influence on Charles Conder at the time of the Heidelberg School.