The Lost Painting, part 2

 

Peter Paul Rubens / his studio: The Three Graces with a Basket of Roses
Oil on canvas, 11 x 64 cm
Photo: Anna Danielsson / Nationalmuseum, CC-BY-SA

In my blog post of 23 June 2025, I wrote about the Rubens copy that Richard Hall enquired about in the summer of 1881. Correspondence preserved in the archives of the National Gallery revealed that it was a copy of Peter Paul Rubens's Three Graces, which had been on display at the Finnish Art Society and which the artist had not recovered. At the time, I said that I did not know exactly which painting it was, as Rubens painted several versions of the same subject.

The Three Graces at the National Museum of Sweden

While reading Maria Görts' doctoral thesis Det sköna i verklighetens värld: akademisk konstsyn i Sverige under senare delen av 1800-talet, 1999 (Beauty and the world of reality: Academic Aesthetic Attitudes in Sweden during the late Ninteeth Century), I came across a passage where she talks about painting copies as part of teaching. Painting a copy was not just about imitating a technique, but the artist had to strive for a creative approach. The copies were painted from the collections of the Nationalmuseum, the Swedish National Museum, which were open to students at the Academy of Fine Arts. In addition, artists who received a travel grant and graduated from the Academy were expected to paint copies of works by the great masters in European art collections.

Why had I not thought of this before - of course the work was located in Sweden, as Hall must have probably spent several weeks painting a copy. Indeed, in the collections of the Swedish National Museum you will find The Three Graces by Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640) / his studio. The painting was completed between about 1620 and 1625, and came to the National Museum in 1866. This must be the version of which Hall painted the copy he sent to the Finnish Art Society.

The Finnish Art Association's ducat prizes

I also mentioned in my earlier blog post that there is no mention of a copy of Rubens by Hall in the catalogues of the exhibitions held by the Finnish Art Society in the early 1880s. Another possible explanation is that Hall entered his painting in a ducats competition for young artists organised by the Art Society. Ducats are gold coins, and they were a kind of international currency of their time. 

The Art Society had been organising ducat competitions since 1858, with separate categories for independent subjects and copies. The prizes were awarded, at least in the early days, on the Art Society's anniversary on 10 March. The rules, recorded in 1879, stipulated that the work entered had to have been completed during the current year, and a copy could only compete for a third prize. To find out whether Hall entered the ducats competition with a copy of Rubens, I have to make another visit to the archives of the National Gallery.