In the Footsteps of painter Richard Hall

  Cover, La Revue nantaise No 4, 15.12.1897 La bibliothèque municipale de Nantes  Richard Hall held a large solo exhibition entitled Exposition des œuvres du peintre Richard Hall in Nantes from December 6 to 19, 1897. The venue was Galerie Préaubert. I have described the works exhibited in a blog post entitled Exhibition in Nantes in 1897 . The local newspaper La Revue nantaise published a review of the exhibition on December 15, 1897. The review is interesting because it also provides some background information on Hall's work at the Melleray monastery. In addition, the five-page review is illustrated with two of Hall's paintings. They depict monks. The images are of rather poor quality, but they still give an idea of the works on display at the exhibition. La Revue nantaise was a magazine about literature and art that came out twice a month. The first issue of the magazine had come out just a little earlier, in November 1897. The exhibition review was written by Marcel Gira...

Exposition des œuvres du peintre Richard Hall 6. - 19.12.1897 Cover of the exhibition catalogue Nantes : Imp. G. Schwob, 1897 La bibliothèque municipale de Nantes Richard Hall lived in Nantes and Paris from 1897 to 1899. In Nantes, his address was 3 rue La Galissonnière. From the beginning of 1898, he also had a studio on rue Dobré in Nantes. Both addresses are located in the center of Nantes, about half a kilometer apart. I have written about these places in my blog posts 1890s and the abbey and An Atelier in Nantes . Hall held a private exhibition in Nantes called Exposition des œuvres du peintre Richard Hall from December 6 to 19, 1897. The venue was Galerie Préaubert at 10, rue Lekain. News reports from the time indicate that the art scene in Nantes was rather sparse at the time and Hall's exhibition was considered a significant event. An article about the exhibition was published in a magazine La Revue Nantaise on December 15, 1897. It is located in La bibliothèque municipa...

  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 ...

  Portrait d'un homme, 1897 (Portrait of a Man) Oil on Canvas, 110,2 x 91,2 cm Musée d'arts de Nantes Photo: Cécile Clos / Musée d'arts de Nantes I’ve mentioned in a few earlier blog posts that Richard Hall lived between 1897 and 1899 at two addresses: Avenue Victor-Hugo 43 in Paris and Rue La Galissonnière 3 in Nantes. From digitized newspapers in the French National Library, I found two articles related to Hall’s work in Nantes. They reveal that he held exhibitions there and had a studio at least from the beginning of 1898. In addition to these news articles, this post draws on information from the website of INHA , the French National Institute for Art History, which provides insights into the art scene in Nantes. News Coverage A news item published in Journal le Phare de la Loire on December 23, 1897 , states that Hall’s works were frequently admired in the window display of Laugé, and that he “has just held a very beautiful private exhibition at the Préaubert gallery....

Moines trappistes; abbaye de Melleray (Loire-Inférieure) Trappist monks Exhibited at the Salon in 1897 Photo: Salon catalogue 1897  Many aspects of Richard Hall's life in the 1890s remain unclear. He reported that he married his cousin Julia Perregaux (in an article written by Mauri R. Hall, her surname is Cornetz) in 1881. She passed away in 1891. The marriage produced son Georges and daughter Agnes. According to the website geni.com they were both born in 1884. As I mentioned in my  blog post about Hall's places of residence, his address was in Le Pouldu in 1890–1893, in Paris in 1894–1896, and in both Nantes and Paris in 1897–1899. I am currently aware of 27 works that Hall produced during those years. Not all of them have photographs. After Hall moved back to Paris, his works were mainly portraits. It was probably then that the development began that led to his successful career as a portrait painter in the following decade. Working in the abbey In an interview with the ...

Philip Tassier: Le Pouldu: farmyard, cirka 1910 Source: Wikimedia Commons Richard Hall has reported that he lived in Brittany for six years. This was probably between 1887 or 1888 and 1893, as I wrote in my previous blog post . Apparently, Hall and his family lived in Le Pouldu for most of that time. It is a small village by the sea on the southern coast of Brittany, southeast of Quimper. Hall's move was part of a larger trend: at that time, artists were flocking to Brittany. It was considered to have an authentic, distinctive culture and picturesque landscapes. My source material includes the publication Taiteilijoiden Bretagne 1800-luvun lopussa (Artists in Brittany at the End of the 19th Century, 1998) by the Akseli Gallen-Kallela Museum, as well as two books published in France about Nordic artists in Brittany: Artistes finlandais en Bretagne 1880-1890 (1990) and Échappées nordiques: Scandinavian and Finnish Artists in France 1870-1914 (2008). These are the only recent book...

Victor Levasseur, Map of France, Atlas National Illustre, 1852 Source: Wikimedia Commons Places of residence 1883–1900 I have briefly described the stages of Richard Hall's life in my blog post The Forgotten Cosmopolitan . We know that after moving to France, he first lived in Paris and studied at private art schools. He then lived for six years in Brittany, in northwestern France. After the death of his wife, which is known to have occurred in 1891, he lived for eight months in a monastery in Nantes. However, it is not known exactly when he lived in these places. Addresses I used the Musée D’Orsay’s database on the Salons in my previous blog post, Memories of the Salons . In addition to that information, the database also contained Richard Hall’s addresses for the years when he had works on display at the Salons. The exception is 1888, for which no address is given. Furthermore, Hall did not have any works in the Salon in 1889, so there is no address information for that year eit...