In the Footsteps of painter Richard Hall

  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 view from the Ateneum's collection exhibition A Question of Time. On the left Gallen-Kallela's Démasquée, center Antell´s portrait by the same artist, on the right Hall's Odalisque. On top Charles-François Daubigny's The Rising Moon on the River Bank. While exploring the archives of the National Gallery, I also got to see Richard Hall's painting Odalisque. It was on display in the Ateneum's exhibition The Question of Time, in a section on the H. F. Antell collection. Among others, the well-known Démasquée by Akseli Gallen-Kallela from 1888 was hung in the same set. The collector Antell's order Herman Frithiof Antell (1847-1893) was born in Vaasa and trained as a doctor. During his lifetime, he amassed important collections of coins, artefacts and works of art with the help of a million-dollar inheritance from his father. From 1877 he had a permanent residence in Paris. Tuukka Talvio has written in Finnish a comprehensive and detailed biography of Antel...