In the Footsteps of painter Richard Hall

Photograph of Richard Hall's painting Gustav Vasa as a child in front of King Hans, 1881. Photo: correspondence of Mauri R. Hall, Pori Art Museum archive   I have written about Richard Hall's time as a student in the blog post Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts . In it, he tells of winning the Royal Prize Medal in his final year of study. The medal was the highest state award for a graduating student. On the other hand, by the time the prize was awarded in 1881, there were already signs of protest among young artists against the old-fashioned way of teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts. The main source for this article is 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). Shared first prize The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts organised the Royal Medal competition in 1881. The theme wa...

  Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, model school in 1874. Engraving by H. Peterson in the Ny Illustrerad Tidning. Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Richard Hall was admitted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 15 in 1875. He studied there for six years, graduating in 1881. Hall's fellow students included artists who went on to have distinguished careers, such as Anders Zorn and Richard Bergh . In the mid-1880s, many of them were part of the Opponenterna group, which rose up against what it perceived as old-fashioned teaching at the academy. So far I have found a few records of Hall's time as a student: firstly, he mentions it in the personal interview I quoted earlier in the Uusi Suometar newspaper of 24. October 1909 . The 1902 edition of Nornan: Svensk kalender contains a chapter by Georg Nordensvan on the students of the Art Academy drawn by Anders Zorn.   Teaching at the Academy of Arts The Swedish Academy of Fine Arts has its roots in the Royal Academ...

Peter Paul Rubens: The Three Graces, (1620-1624)     Already in early spring I was in contact with the research services of the Finnish National Gallery, because they were about to move their collection. As a result, the archival material had to be ordered in advance so that it could be viewed in the summer. A lot of material was there, including newspaper clippings, a few letters written by Hall and literature in which the artist is mentioned. Let's start with the letters: they concerned a painting that had been in an exhibition at the Finnish Art Society, and which Hall wanted to find. Rubens' The Three Graces Hall studied at the Stockholm Academy of Fine Arts from 1875 to 1881. During his studies, he probably painted a copy of The Three Graces by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Copies of paintings by old masters were a common practice in art education at the time. It was a way of familiarising oneself with the masters' painting techniques and treatment of the subject matt...