In the Footsteps of painter Richard Hall

  Peter Paul Rubens / his studio: The Three Graces with a Basket of Roses Oil on canvas, 11 x 64 cm Photo: Anna Danielsson / Nationalmuseum, CC-BY-SA In my blog post of 23 June 2025 , I wrote about the Rubens copy that Richard Hall enquired about in the summer of 1881. Correspondence preserved in the archives of the National Gallery revealed that it was a copy of Peter Paul Rubens's Three Graces, which had been on display at the Finnish Art Society and which the artist had not recovered. At the time, I said that I did not know exactly which painting it was, as Rubens painted several versions of the same subject. The Three Graces at the National Museum of Sweden While reading 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), I came across a passage where she talks about painting copies as part ...

  Jenny Nyström: Gustav Vasa as a child in front of king Hans, 1881 Oil painting Kalmar county museum Photo: Wikimedia Commons In my previous blog post, I told about the royal medal Richard Hall won while studying at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. The theme of the history painting competition was Gustav Vasa as a child in front of King Hans (also known as King John), and the first prize was shared between Hall and Jenny Nyström (1854-1946). In this article I discuss the content of the winning works and the role of history painting in Sweden at that time. Jenny Nyström's winning work is discussed in the Konsthistoriepodden podcast in Swedish by Alexandra Fried and Alexandra Herlitz, which is the main source for this article. I have not yet found sources for Hall's version. The Finnish press apparently did not report Hall's victory, as the National Library's digital newspaper archive does not contain any mention of the prize. Maria Görts discusses the role of ...

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...

How did Richard Hall's English father and Swiss-French mother come to live in Finland in the 19th century? Depending on the source, the details vary, but in any case, the story must begin with Hall's grandfather John Hall of Tredennick. The most comprehensive information about Richard Hall's family roots can be found in an article published in Finnish newspaper Satakunnan Kansa on 12 September 1937, written while the artist was still alive. The article was written under the pseudonym Arctoterrannus. The information in this post is based on that article unless otherwise stated. Grandfather John Hall of Tredennick The personal history of Grandfather Hall is described in the Finnish blog Kadonnutta aikaa (Lost Time). John Hall was born on 6 May 1785 in London and his family owned the Tredneck estate in Middlesex County, England. At some point in his life John Halll moved to St Petersburg, and later from there to Finland. According to geni.com , he had eight children in total...

    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...

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...

 Clues from the past The story of painter Richard Hall (1860-1942) came up six years ago in a newspaper article in the archives of the Pori Art Museum where I worked. The article had appeared in a Finnish newspaper Satakunnan Kansa in 1975. In it, Mauri R. Hall, the grandson of the artist's brother, recounted the life of this artist who had been forgotten in the mists of history. At the time, I researched Hall's life story on the Internet and wrote an article about him for the Finnish Wikipedia.   Richard Hall: La classe manuelle. École de petites filles (Finistère), 1889 Musée des beaux-Arts de Rennes A variable life Richard Hall's life turned out to be quite interesting: his father was British, his mother Swiss-French. Born in Pori, Finland, Hall's family moved to Helsinki in the 1960s, then to London and Stockholm. Richard Hall studied at the Stockholm Academy of Fine Arts. In 1881, aged only 21, he won a history painting competition organised by the Swedish A...