Richard Bergh (1858 - 1919)

Nationality

Sweden

Place of Birth

Stockholm, Sverige

Place of Death

Saltsjö-Storängen, Sverige

Biography

Richard Bergh was a Swedish painter and museum director who predominantly worked in Stockholm. Bergh trained at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts from 1878 to 1881 before continuing his training at Académie Colarossi in France until 1884. Bergh’s painting was greatly influenced by late nineteenth-century Naturalism and Romanticism, and he painted portraits of several prominent Swedish figures, including August Strindberg. In 1893 he travelled to Varberg, founding the Varberg School, which specialised in landscape studies in the spirit of Nordic National Romanticism. Richard Bergh was a highly notable figure in the Swedish art world and did much to encourage and promote the new generation of artists of the time. In 1915 he became Director General of Nationalmuseum, Sweden’s museum of fine arts, where he was instrumental in modernising its rules on exhibitions and purchasing.