George Henry Hall (painter)

George Henry Hall , Self-Portrait, 1845, Brooklyn Museum

George Henry Hall (born September 21, 1825 in Boston , Massachusetts , † February 17, 1913 in New York ) was an American genre , portrait and still life painter .

Life

Hall, the son of a timber merchant with Irish roots, grew up in Manchester , New Hampshire , where he attended school and began self-taught art at the age of 16 . Since there was no art academy within his reach, he became a member of a Boston artists' association and met its members in their studios . In 1842 he settled in Boston as a genre and portrait painter. In 1846 he exhibited for the first time at the Boston Athenæum . Until 1868 he regularly took part in other exhibitions there.

Sir Toby Belch (in a scene from What you want ), 1854, Folger Shakespeare Library

In 1848 Hall sold three paintings to the American Art Union in New York, one of the first art associations in the United States. At the suggestion of Andrew Warner (1806–1899), secretary of the American Art Union, he decided in 1849 to go to Düsseldorf to study painting . After the American Art-Union had bought seven more Hall paintings on Warner's recommendation in 1849, the financial conditions were in place for Hall to travel to Düsseldorf via Antwerp together with Eastman Johnson , another protégé of the American Art-Union . In the same year he began his academic studies in Rudolf Wiegmann's anatomy class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . He also took lessons from Heinrich Mücke , from whom Johnson also received instructions. After about a year, Hall decided to go to Paris . He then traveled to Switzerland , then went to Rome , where he stayed for about a year.

In 1851 he returned to Düsseldorf and in 1852 to the United States, where he settled in New York and in 1853 began exhibiting his European-inspired genre and figure paintings and occasionally portraits at the National Academy of Design , almost 250 in total over the course of his career Pictures, including works that dealt with the person of William Shakespeare and his subjects. In 1856 Hall had a solo exhibition at leading New York art dealer Groupil and Company . In 1857 he exhibited still lifes for the first time in the Boston Athenæum. This area of painting shaped his work well into the 1860s.

A Dead Rabbit , 1858

After eleven people were killed in a violent confrontation between rival New York street gangs on July 4, 1857, Hall created the nude A Dead Rabbit in 1858 , the heroic image of a brick-armed rowdy of the Irish street gang "Dead Rabbit" who lived in the slums the Lower East Side of Manhattan was active.

In 1863 he became a member of the New York Century Club . He also joined the Union League Club . In 1868 the National Academy of Design accepted him as an academician , after he had already been an associate member of this academy. At times he served on the board. In the Tenth Street Studio Building , a prestigious New York artist's residence, he had a studio from 1874 to around 1883, and from 1867 until his death a summer residence in Palenville, New York , an artists' colony in the Catskill Mountains .

In the 1870s, Hall went on study trips to Palestine , Egypt, and Spain . From 1885 to 1896 Hall spent his winters in Rome, where he had another studio. He was accompanied there by his student and companion, the painter Jennie Augusta Brownscombe , to whom he bequeathed the house in the Catskill Mountains when he died.

literature

Hall, George Henry . In: Ulrich Thieme , Fred. C. Willis (Ed.): General lexicon of visual artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 15 : Gresse – Hanselmann . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1922, p. 505 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
George C. Groce, David H. Wallace: The New-York Historical Society's dictionary of artists in America 1564-1860 . Yale University Press, New Haven 1957, p. 284.
Emmanuel Bénézit : Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays . Gründ, Paris 1976, Volume 5, p. 363.

Web links

Commons : George Henry Hall - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

George Henry Hall , data sheet in the portal rkd.nl ( Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie )
George Henry Hall , biography on avictorian.com

Individual evidence

↑ Cf. No. 4701 in the finding aid 212.01.04 Student lists of the Art Academy Düsseldorf , website in the portal archive.nrw.de ( State Archive North Rhine-Westphalia )
↑ Bettina Baumgärtel , Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb: Directory of foreign artists. Nationality, residence and studies in Düsseldorf . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 1, p. 431.
↑ Ross Barrett: Rioting refigured: George Henry Hall and the picturing of American Political Violence . In: The Art Bulletin , Volume 92, 2010, pp. 211-230.

personal data
SURNAME	Hall, George Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American genre, portrait, and still life painter
DATE OF BIRTH	September 21, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH	Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH	February 17, 1913
Place of death	New York City

[1] Cf. No. 4701 in the finding aid 212.01.04 Student lists of the Art Academy Düsseldorf , website in the portal archive.nrw.de ( State Archive North Rhine-Westphalia )

[2] Bettina Baumgärtel , Sabine Schroyen, Lydia Immerheiser, Sabine Teichgröb: Directory of foreign artists. Nationality, residence and studies in Düsseldorf . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 1, p. 431.

[3] Ross Barrett: Rioting refigured: George Henry Hall and the picturing of American Political Violence . In: The Art Bulletin , Volume 92, 2010, pp. 211-230.