In the Footsteps of painter Richard Hall

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...