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Richard Bergh - one of the most outstanding of the Swedish generation of artists who emerged in the eighties of the last century, the time of plein airism and valeur painting - inherited from his father, the eminent landscape painter Eduard Bergh, the analytical composition, the earnest effort to penetrate the object of observation, the serious striving for understanding and thoroughness. — Among fine contemporaries, Richard Bergh is the researcher, an honest and dignified characterist, both in his portraits and in his landscape paintings, where he seeks the local character of the mood with the same individual acuteness as when he analyzes human characters. Intelligence and reflection find the dominant feature of his art. Richard Bergh studied at the Academy of Stockholm, then in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens, received a medal at the Salon in 1883 - the first time he exhibited: "Portrait of a Friend". Later he tried such motifs as: "A hypnotic séance" and in the nineties of the last century a stylized landscape "Memory of Wisby" - and the neo-romantic direction "Knight and the Maiden" - but in the portrait we find him most directly and most himself, especially in friend portals, in pictures of those he knows and appreciates best. Among his most important paintings in this field are: "My Wife" Salon 1886, Paris. This painting is both a superiorly executed portrait and a representative study of value for its time. — "Eva Bonnier" - the lonely woman, lost in thought - here the color scale goes in black and yellow and now the last, not yet exhibited portrait of the suffering poet Gustav Fröding, sitting in his bed, a very interesting painting from a psychological point of view. In the group portrait "The Board of Directors of the Artists' Association", Bergh gives characterful portraits of his friends from the circle to which he belongs. Among his other paintings, one must not forget the generously kept "The Old Men on the Beach", who peer over the calm sea and the setting sun, and especially not the painting which is reproduced here in exquisite reproduction - "Swedish Summer Evening" is its official title with its fresh, radiant sunshine over the mirror-like sea and the secluded shores. Prince Eugene of Sweden stood as a model for the young man on the balcony. The painting was completed in 1900, exhibited in Stockholm in the same year, and in 1901 at the Munich Exhibition, where it received great recognition. Richard Bergh is well represented in Stockholm's National Museum ("The Board of the Artists' Association" and Portrait of Eva Bonnier") in the Thiel Gallery, in the same gallery ("The Knight and the Virgin") and in the gallery of the publisher K. O. Bonnier (portrait of Strindberg, Fröding), also in the museum in Gothenburg ("My Wife", Swedish Summer Evening") and in the Königl. gallery in Copenhagen ("The Portrait" from 1883, for which he received a medal, and "The Old Men on the Beach"). An excellent self-portrait - painted in 1898 hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Martin2001 Satisfaction Guaranteed Policy!
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