Richard Bergh: Natural Science and National Art in Sweden

The writings of Richard Bergh reflect a critical scholarly, if passionate, search for understanding art motivated, in part, by his desire to formulate the parameters of a Swedish school of art that was as recognizable to his contemporaries as was the French. Science, particularly contemporary developments in the fledgling field of cognitive psychology, furnished him with plausible explanations for why artists create, how works of art communicate effectively with their audiences, and why art produced in different times and places appears differently. It also suggested to him practical strategies artists could implement in achieving their various goals. Never satisfied and always striving, Bergh was a voracious consumer of scientific literature and a crucial conduit of the latest scientific research to his artist-colleagues and Swedish intellectuals in the final decades of the nineteenth century.