Richard Bergh 
Richard Bergh was born in Stockholm in 1858, the son of Pro¬ 
fessor Edvard Bergh, one of the foremost landscape painters of his 
generation. After some years of study in Sweden, he went, in 1881, 
to Paris, where he spent the rest of the decade in study, interrupted 
only by visits to his homeland. 
In 1889 he was Swedish 
Commissioner in the Inter¬ 
national Exposition in Paris 
and was awarded a medal 
there. Shortly afterwards he 
returned to Sweden, where he 
made his home, chiefly in 
Stockholm, until his death, in 
1919. 
While in Paris Richard 
Bergh, like many of his com¬ 
patriots, came under the in¬ 
fluence of the French open 
air painter Bastien-Lepage, 
at the same time as his own 
intellectual temperament pre¬ 
pared him for the more re¬ 
flective and psychological art 
of the nineties. He was one 
of the leaders in the group 
known as the Opponents 
who, in the eighties, revolted 
against old academic tradi¬ 
tions in art, but a certain bal¬ 
ance and harmony in his own 
nature prevented him from 
falling into crudities, and earned for him the title of “the classicist 
of the opposition.” He has painted many sunny and pleasant Swedish 
landscapes and some romantic pictures, such as The Knight and the 
Maiden } but it is generally conceded that he attained the highest level 
of his art in his penetrating and intellectual portraits. Among them 
is a portrait of August Strindberg and one of Gustav Froding, the 
latter sitting in his sick-bed, with tangled hair and beard, and eyes 
aflame with wild thoughts. 
Richard Bergii. Self Portrait, in the 
Uffjzi Gallery, 1898. 
