Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts

 

Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, model school in 1874.
Engraving by H. Peterson in the Ny Illustrerad Tidning.

Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts

Richard Hall was admitted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 15 in 1875. He studied there for six years, graduating in 1881. Hall's fellow students included artists who went on to have distinguished careers, such as Anders Zorn and Richard Bergh. In the mid-1880s, many of them were part of the Opponenterna group, which rose up against what it perceived as old-fashioned teaching at the academy.

So far I have found a few records of Hall's time as a student: firstly, he mentions it in the personal interview I quoted earlier in the Uusi Suometar newspaper of 24. October 1909. The 1902 edition of Nornan: Svensk kalender contains a chapter by Georg Nordensvan on the students of the Art Academy drawn by Anders Zorn.

 

Teaching at the Academy of Arts

The Swedish Academy of Fine Arts has its roots in the Royal Academy of Drawing, founded in 1735. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts was founded by King Gustav III in 1773. From 1780, the Academy was located at Fredsgatan 12 in Stockholm. Female students were admitted without special permission from 1864. Despite its prestigious name, the teaching at the Royal Academy of Arts was not considered to be of high quality, and it was common for students to develop their skills at private art schools.

In the 1870s, the school's teaching was divided into two sections: the basic education (principskolan) and the academy. In the academy, students learned to draw and paint plaster copies of ancient sculpture, live models and landscapes. Teaching was based on the classical art education common in Europe, with a particular emphasis on the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Nordensvan recalls that, because of tobacco smoke, the plaster statues in the antique classroom could hardly be called white.

Hall's own memoirs

In an interview with Uusi Suometar, Hall tells the following about his student days:

- You were a student at the newest art academy of Gustav III?

- Already a couple of years younger than I actually had the right to be.

- And your teachers at the academy were...?

- Count G. von Rosen, Malmström, Wallander and Winge were the ones who guided me from the beginnings of the preparatory class to the heights of the royal medal?..
It is, as you know, the highest prize that a young man of true worth can win there.

- And you have got it.

- Miraculously yes... thank yous in all the classes, and finally a medal, followed by that which is better, namely a grant of three thousand crowns to go abroad for two years...

- And why do you say "miraculously yes!"

- Because I don't think I learned much there.

- !!!

- I learned most from an artist who was not a teacher at the academy. I mean the painter Perseus (aka Bersjon), before whom I painted in Gripsholm before leaving Sweden for Paris in the autumn of 1881.

The teachers mentioned by Hall were Georg von Rosen, August Malmström, Josef Wilhelm Wallander and Mårten Eskil Winge. In addition to their teaching duties, they were painters who depicted Swedish history, Scandinavian mythology and landscapes in the style of the German Düsseldorf School. The painter Edvard Perséus ran a private art school in Stockholm from 1875 and became a popular teacher because of his open-mindedness.

Palettskrap artist portraits

Students at the Art Academy started publishing Palettskrap magazine in the spring of 1877. The name of the magazine probably refers to the paints left on the painter's palette. The magazine was produced by lithography in editions of 100 copies. In 1880, Palettskrap published portraits of fellow students by Anders Zorn. Zorn had drawn them during breaks in model class while the live model rested. In addition to Richard Hall, the illustrated artists included among others Bergh, Carl Larsson, Oscar Björck and Georg Nordensvan.

Nordensvan's portraits were published in his edited edition of the Nornan annual in 1902. In the article, he also recalls his fellow students at the Academy of Fine Arts. Richard Hall is mentioned in the text:

"And then there's Richard Hall, who is half-English and half-Swedish, but also a bit Finnish, because he was born in Finland, and God knows if he's not from Switzerland on his mother's side. He's a hunter [? “jägerian” in original text], and he's pictured in Palettskrap, walking without an overcoat in a winter frost."

Of many of his fellow students, Nordensvan recalls their particular characteristics as artists, but Hall is mainly mentioned for his international background. The quickly made small portrait is skilfully composed, with the dark hair of the subject contrasted with the dark area of the left shoulder.

 

Anders Zorn: Richard Hall, 1880
Ink drawing
Source: Wikimedia Commons / 
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