Paintings from Brittany

 

Richard Hall: Interiör från Bretagne (Interior. Scene in Brittany), 1888
Oil on canvas, 75 x 93 cm
Nationalmuseum, Sweden
Photo: Linn Ahlgren / Nationalmuseum

 

 

In my blog post, I wrote about Brittany and Le Pouldu during the time when Richard Hall lived in Brittany. I am currently aware of eight paintings that he made while living there. Two of them are located in museums. I will now focus on these works, as high-quality photographs of them are available. The other six works have either been sold at auction, shared on social media, or exhibited at the Paris Salon. Hall himself has said that he sold many of his Brittany-themed works to the United States.

Artists who traveled to Brittany were particularly interested in seascapes and the distinctive clothing style of the local population. Nordic artists mostly depicted the region's inhabitants outdoors, working on farms or as part of the landscape. At the same time, they practiced outdoor painting, which required a unique painting technique. The paintings by Richard Hall that I have found so far deviate from this trend: with the exception of one girl standing in the grass, their subjects are located indoors. This seems strange, as Hall lived in the seaside village of Le Pouldou for six years. However, his background was strongly in interior painting, and he had not previously painted landscapes or nature. Perhaps he was not particularly interested in depicting them?

The source material for this article is Patrick Daum's text L'école républicaine en Bretagne and the books Taiteilijoiden Bretagne 1800-luvun lopussa (1998), Artistes finlandais en Bretagne 1880 - 1890 (1990) and Échappées nordiques: Scandinavian and Finnish Artists in France 1870 - 1914 (2008).

Interior. Scene in Brittany

The painting Interior. Scene in Brittany (Interiör från Bretagne) was completed in 1888. In the spring of the same year, Akseli Gallen-Kallela's (1865–1931) painting Rural Life (no. 1059 Un intérieur de paysan) was exhibited at the Paris Salon. He had painted it in Finland while living in a modest farmhouse in Keuruu, in the village of Ekola. The painting skillfully depicts both the warm light of the fireplace and the cold, bright natural light streaming in through the window. Rural Life received praise upon its completion. It was also exhibited at the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, where it was awarded a silver medal.

Hall's Interior. Scene in Brittany is constructed using similar elements: on the right is a red-glowing fireplace, and on the left is natural light shining through a window. In Rural Life, natural light falls on the people in the background, the loaves of bread hanging from the ceiling, and the spinning wool. In Interior. Scene in Brittany, natural light falls on the woman furthest from the window, the bundles hanging from the ceiling, and the steam rising from the pot. Gallen-Kallela's painting is more tightly framed and freer in its painting technique, while in Hall's work the framing is looser and the red glow of the fireplace more subdued. However, it is not possible to evaluate Interior. Scene in Brittany further on the basis of a photograph alone. Nevertheless, there are so many similarities that one is led to think that influences were transferred from one artist to the other. Perhaps Hall drew new inspiration for his interior paintings from Gallen-Kallela?

Akseli Gallen-Kallela never visited Brittany. Instead, he traveled around the Finnish countryside and depicted local life in places such as Keuruu and Karelia. It was the same phenomenon as in the Brittany boom: rapid urbanization and industrialization had sparked fears among artists that authentic folk culture and rural life were disappearing. In Gallen-Kallela's case, it was also a question of searching for the roots of Finnish culture. This was considered important at the time, when autonomous Finland was dreaming of independence from the Russian Empire. In Hall's case, the motives for living in the small village of Le Pouldu for six years remain unclear.

 Akseli Gallen-Kallela: Rustic Life, 1887
Oil on canvas, 94 x 90 cm
Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Crafts class at a girls' school

In La classe manuelle. École de petites filles (Finistère) (The crafts class. Girls' school (Finistère), a school class is working in a large building that looks like a warehouse. At the back of the room there is a barrel, rakes, and bundles of what may be straw or hay. The students are sitting on the floor knitting. One of the pupils is reading a book. The teacher is standing and instructing the pupils. Further back, against the wall, stands a girl who is being punished. Light streams in through the large windows. The atmosphere is focused. Through the open doorway, a woman can be seen hanging laundry. Does she represent the girls' future, which, despite their education, will be spent doing farm and household work?

Patrick Daum depicted the state of the school system in Brittany in the 1880s. At that time, education was still underdeveloped, and literacy in rural areas was poor. In 1881–1882, elementary school became compulsory, secular, and free of charge, but municipalities had difficulty organizing teaching in suitable premises. Schools were often held in temporary buildings, such as barns. Girls' education was limited and did not prepare them to be full citizens. In 1882, the use of regional languages and dialects in schools was banned. Teachers became conveyors of secular morality, and the school system acted as a counterweight to the influence of the church.

According to Daum, the prevailing style at the time, naturalism (also known as realism), reinforced the ideology of "liberty, fraternity, equality" that was important to the Third Republic, and La classe manuelle perfectly reflects these values. The painting's austere, warehouse-like setting lacks any references to the Catholic Church, and the girls are learning the handicraft skills needed in the countryside. This may explain why the painting received an honorable mention at the 1890 Paris Salon and was purchased by the state of France.

Richard Hall: La classe manuelle. École de petites filles (Finistère), 1889
(The crafts class. Girls' school (Finistère)

Oil on canvas, 85 x 142 cm

Musée des beaux-Arts de Rennes, Deposit of the National Contemporary Art Fund 1891

Photo: Wikimedia  Commons