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Richard Bergh: Natural Science and National Art in Sweden

Michelle Facos
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

Published by Maney Publishing (c) IOM Communications Ltd

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.
keywords National Romantic artists, Impressionism, Naturalism, Swedish art

Among Swedens National Romantic artists, Richard Bergh (18581919) was the one most interested in establishing a scientific basis for National Romantic painting. This article will consider the essays written by Bergh between 1886 and 1903 that were published in his 1908 collection On Art and Other Things (Om Konst och Annat) and explore the ways in which Bergh drew on diverse scientific disciplines evolutionary biology, botany, physiology, physics in order to explain what he perceived to be the proper mission and method of art. To place Berghs enterprise in its proper context, it is important to remember that the desire to elevate the status of art by allying it with science motivated numerous painters in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The mimetic role of art had, by the 1870s, been supplanted by photography, whose ability to capture with exactitude the minute details of the visible world surpassed that of painting due to the use of glass plate negatives and the development of the collodion emulsion process by W.B. Bolton and B.J. Sayce in 1864. What a photograph could not achieve in the 1880s was a sense of a captured moment as part of a continuum, nuances of light and
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atmosphere and, most significantly, colour. Naturalist artists such as Eugene Boudin (France), Josef Israels (The Netherlands), and Richards father, Edvard Bergh (Sweden), as well as impressionist artists such as Claude Monet (France), Peder Severin Kryer (Denmark), and Max Liebermann (Germany) studied nature intensively with the goal of faithfully representing their perceptions, a goal which they interpreted in divergent ways (Figure 1). In his unpublished essay That Painters Art (Den Mlarens konst), Bergh noted that the more photography developed during the century, the more artists around the world felt an intuitive need to distance themselves from objective, quasi-photographic representations. (Bergh, Bergh Archive 91/5, 43) The point of departure for Naturalist and Impressionist artists was their attentive and precise perception, however that was conceived, and it was evident from the variety of artistic styles among Naturalist and Impressionist painters that perception, as well as ideas about what should be perceived, varied from individual to individual. These differences can be considered in terms of liberal political positions at the time, with Republicanism (based on the French revolutionary ideals of freedom equality, and solidarity libert, galit, fraternit) at one end of the spectrum, and anarchy at the other. Some artists asserted that technique an artists language of expression should reflect their singularity, which might result in viewer difficulty decoding the ideas embedded in an image. Others felt that technique should be based on general scientific principles, which would presumably result in greater accessibility. These positions were consonant with divergent political positions. The belief that an artists perception and technique should only reflect individual identity harmonized with the ideals of anarchy, a political philosophy that eschewed authority and conformity (Sweetman 1999). From this point of view, artistic self-expression was valued more than

gure 1 Claude Monet, Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1867, oil on canvas, 98.1x129.9 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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communication. The conviction that communication was the prime directive of painting made the discovery of universal scientific principles a priority the development of a common visual language that everyone could understand. This in turn reflected a more egalitarian, democratic, and socialistic political stance. Georges Seurats effort to formulate a scientific approach to Impressionism is perhaps the most familiar example of this intention (Homer 1964). Berghs thoughts on art and science engaged with all of these ideas, as he tried to reconcile his democratic-socialistic political convictions with his calling as an artist, a pursuit that could be considered self-indulgent rather than utilitarian. In her pioneering study of Richard Bergh, Birgitta Rapp commented on the art world as progressive Swedish artists viewed it in the 1880s: The realistic painting that was a consequence of the new Zeitgeist in Europe, must however be complemented by an acceptance of the striving towards populist solidarity, in order for the social engagement demonstrated by the aforementioned artists [Carl Larsson, Karl Nordstrm, Richard Bergh] to arise. (Rapp 1978, 29) Bergh thought of himself as a socialist and firmly believed in the fundamental equality of all individuals. These views emerged succinctly in Berghs unpublished essay Rich and Poor (Rika och fattiga), which begins: All people are the same at birth. Berghs egalitarian social convictions clearly inflected his art theory, which presumes a universal, original ability to feel, understand, and express, and were realized in the art school he helped establish Konstnrsfrbundetsmlarskola where students and teachers contributed equally to the schools physical and administrative maintenance (Strmbom 1965, 371381). Bergh was first and foremost an easel painter, a format that is easily commodified as a portable object of worth; ownership of paintings signalled personal wealth. If considered as mere aesthetic commodities, paintings would have been repugnant to Bergh, but French writer and critic Charles Baudelaire gave artists an historical mission in 1863, when he exhorted them to record the time and place in which they lived to be painters of modern life (Baudelaire 1972, 395422). By affirming easel paintings relevance, Baudelaire opened the possibility of painting as a tool for social change. The idea of painting modern life galvanized Bergh and his young Swedish colleagues in the early 1880s, when they went to Paris to live and work. Exhilarated by the dynamism and diversity of the French capital, Bergh and his colleagues began immediately to record life and nature in and around Paris and to legitimate their achievements though participation in Salon, the state-sponsored annual art exhibition held in Paris (Lemaire 2004). But, by the end of the 1880s, the enterprise of documenting modern life seemed to lose its meaning; Swedish artists wanted to put art at the service of more tangible socio-political ideals. Regardless of what they had thought previously, by 1890 Swedens progressive young artists wanted to create art that was rooted in the national past and promoted social democratic principles (Facos 1998). According to Bergh, the motivating factors for Swedish artists to return was an increasingly profound understanding that the eras artistic solutions lay in nature and freedom, both of which could only be experienced in their
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deepest sense at home (Bergh 91/5, 34). Bergh was among those devoted to the progressive ideals of Swedens social democratic party (established in 1889) with its French Republic platform of freedom, equality, and solidarity (frihet, jmlikhet, och brderskap). His solidarity with the working classes was articulated in his unpublished essay The Workers Conscience, where he observed that never before have workers returned at the end of the day so filthy, so exhausted, so brutalized, so emptied of human value and beauty as in our day. (Facos 1998, 182) Commitment to these ideals meant striking a balance between the needs of individuals and those of society. For individuals and societies that were healthy there was no conflict; these needs were perceived as mutually fulfilling. These intersections of individual and societal health, art and science were major themes in Berghs polemical essays as the intellectual leader of Swedens National Romantic painters. Bergh read widely and was steeped in the quasi-mystical ideas of fellow Swedes Emmanuel Swedenborg (16881772) and Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (17931866). He shared their belief that matter and spirit were two aspects of divinity, with matter the material manifestation of spirit. These ideas also permeated German Romantic philosophy, which was the single biggest influence on Swedish intellectuals in the nineteenth century.1 For Bergh, as for the Romantics, studying nature offered insight into unseen forces and universal truths. As a student at Stockholms Royal Academy of Art in the 1870s, Bergh quickly became bored with a curriculum that had changed little in two centuries. As a result, he enrolled in 1877 in the independent painting school operated by Edvard Persus, who took students on excursions to paint and draw outdoors, and encouraged them to record nature from a personal point of view. In 1874, Persus went to Paris where his encounter with Naturalism revolutionized his attitude towards painting (Loos 1945, 263). In Persuss class, students became amateur natural scientists, carefully observing and recording the evanescent world of nature, becoming sensitive to its most subtle changes. During the same period, Bergh frequently attended hypnotisms. Thus, from the very beginning, Berghs thoughts were focused on both the visible world and on the human psyche. Reconciling natural science and psychology preoccupied Bergh because of his belief in a pantheistic unity in the universe and his desire to discover and disseminate the common laws underlying realms both visible and invisible (Facos 1998, 105115). Upon his arrival in Paris in 1881, Bergh attended a meeting of the Society of Psychological Sciences (Socit Franaise de Psychologie) at the Palais Royale in order to watch a magnetic sance. (Bergh 1908, 13) The term magnetism was coined in 1774 by Swiss scientist Franz Mesmer to describe treatments he developed based on the premise that an invisible magnetic fluid surrounded the human body. By 1881, ideas about the validity of magnetism had changed and it was then considered a form of entertainment practiced by charlatans who astonished gullible audiences. Bergh remembered that the hall in the Palais Royale where magnetisms were held contained a bust of Allan Kardec (18041869), the pseudonym of Hippolyte Rival, the father of spiritism, who published numerous books on the topic and edited
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the journal Revue Spirite (Bergh 1908, 13). The fact that Bergh was familiar with Kardec attests to his fascination with invisible realms. Although magnetism was largely discredited by the 1880s, Kardec followed modern scientific methods in investigating phenomena that could only plausibly, it seemed, be explained by the existence of incorporeal beings or spirits. Kardecs marriage of scientific observation with curiosity about unseen forces would certainly have appealed to Bergh; Bergh was clearly interested in modern theories of empathy.2 Hypnotism, a term coined by Scottish physician James Braid in 1841, denoted the scientific practice of inducing a trancelike mental state through carefully presented suggestions. Until the twentieth century, the fluidity between hard science and pseudo science was great. Science was daily proving the existence of realms beyond the human senses germs and microbes, electricity and radiation which, on the one hand, made it difficult for people to understand where the boundaries of credibility lay but, on the other, gave them a receptivity to new ideas that modern day sceptics may find puzzling.3 While in Paris, Bergh attended numerous lectures and demonstrations, including ones by the renowned Dr Dujardin-Beaumetz, who worked at the Hospital Saint Antoine in Paris and whose Clinical Therapeutics. The Treatment of Nervous Diseases; of General Diseases; and of Fevers was translated into English in 1885. Berghs fascination with Dujardin-Beaumetzs hypnotic experiments is recorded in Berghs 1887 painting A Suggestion, which depicts a young woman at the moment she loses consciousness (Figure 2; Bergh 1908, 14). Insight into the ideas Bergh was grappling with in this painting is provided by the Self Critique of A Suggestion written for the journal Nornan, and published in its 1887 issue. Bergh wrote his essay while vacationing with his young wife, Helena Klemming, at the Normandy resort of Flammanville in August 1887. He stated that his goal in A Suggestion was to depict the fleeting transitional moment between consciousness and unconsciousness, a moment that photography could not capture and one that passed so quickly in actuality that grasping it required ipso facto contemplating it with aid of memory. As an adherent to the Naturalist principle of unbiased, observation, Bergh worried about the extent to which memories of a hypnotism that took place six years earlier of a Danish woman on a summer evening in Sannois intruded on his depiction. This seemed like a problem in light of Naturalist theory, but upon further reflection, Bergh concluded that complete objectivity and freedom from past experience and memories was impossible and not necessarily desirable. He did, however, insist on the importance of artists (and scientists) subordinating memories to fresh, unsullied, and painstaking observation. This was the best way, Bergh felt, for insuring the sense of immediacy that would communicate most effectively with ones audience. Berghs essay Self Critique was an exercise in self-reflection in which the artist revealed his awareness of the extent to which an individual is a product of past experience. He pondered the possibility that memory actually aids the artist in filtering inessential data in order to create a more convincing,
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gure 2 Richard Bergh, Hypnotic Sance, 1887, oil on canvas, 153x190 cm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

distilled, and therefore more potent image of reality. Bergh reconsidered his earlier position that memory did not hinder objective representation, but provided the criteria required to judiciously prioritize impressions. Still, Bergh asserted that one must live in continual contact with the reality one studies. (Bergh 1908, 18) The acuity of an artists vision was the cornerstone of his art. In a notebook that he kept in Paris in 1887, Bergh made a note to himself:
study people. . .how they walk, how they stand, how they live, how they rise, how they sit, how they work, how they rest, how they eat, how they drink, how they enjoy themselves, dance, sing, play, how they deal with common interests, how they love, how they hate, how they take revenge, how they come to an agreement how they live, how they die.4

In Self-Critique Bergh considered the complex constellation of factors affecting cognition. The Impressionist ideal of functioning as a completely neutral recorder of modern life was, in Berghs estimation, an impossible task, and one senses Berghs receptivity to Symbolism, the new art movement that was concerned primarily with ideas, emotions, the mind, and the human imagination (Facos 2009). Berghs interest in empathy and emotion was first articulated in On the Necessity of Exaggeration in Art (Om verdrifternas ndvndighet i
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konsten), written in 1886. There he asserted that every individual had a fundamental need to clearly perceive the personality of the artist who created the artwork (s)he contemplates (Bergh 1908, 3). Although Bergh considers their aims of equal significance, he made a distinction between the scientist, whose task is best achieved through disciplined objectivity, and the artist, whose task is best achieved through emotion: Without passion, there is no true art. (Bergh 1908, 5) This distinguished Berghs objectives from those of the Impressionists and Neoimpressionists who strove to dispassionately record the world in which they lived Monet depicted his family, Gustave Caillebotte concentrated on the new neighbourhoods frequented by wealthy Parisians, and Degas recorded behind-the-scenes activities at the Paris Opera. To Bergh, the artist without emotion was a mere imitator perhaps an implicit critique of Seurats scientific Impressionism not a creator, and it was the quasi-divine act of creation constructing something from the inspirational well of the human imagination that gave artists their status and significance. In this respect Bergh posited a scientific basis for Symbolist painting, the prevailing avant-garde trend in art during the late 1880s and 1890s. Symbolist art distinguished itself from the previous movements of Impressionism, Naturalism, and Realism, by subordinating the visual world to ideas and feelings, those elements that were considered uniquely human and which sprang from the mysterious depths of the unconscious. Bergh was interested in identifying the factors that led artists to create in a particular way, concluding that environmental conditions combined with an individuals singular character to determine the direction and form an artists work takes. Bergh concurred with Emile Zolas famous assertion that art is nature seen through a temperament. (Bergh 1908, 10) In On the Necessity of Exaggeration in Art, Bergh acknowledged his debt to Zola concerning the science that I call modern aesthetics that Zola had published two decades earlier (Zola 1987a, 421). Zola conducted research in this field because he believed it helped to explain differences in artistic interpretation and style. Zola asserted that, Each great artist has come to give us a new and personal translation of nature. . . In human creations, in works of art, I seek to find behind each an artist, a brother, who presents nature to me under a new face, with all the power of all the sweetness of his personality. The work, thus seen, tells me the story of a heart and of a body. . . (Zola 1987b, 427) In other words, great artists produce works that simultaneously exude the producers individuality and communicate unambiguously with their audience. For Zola, as for Bergh, accomplishing this dual purpose required a commitment to behaving honestly, a mode of conduct which was, in turn, the cornerstone of a harmonious, egalitarian society. In his 1891 essay Art is Life (Konst r lif), Bergh asserted that art is a fundamental expression of the life force: art is a natural expression of everyones need to live as intensively as possible to feel ourselves alive, and art will exist as long as life exists.5 (Bergh 1908, 34) Thus art (as well as literature and music) was, for Bergh, an immanent and biologically-rooted phenomenon, an expression of vitality. His ideas were consonant with the theories of the English natural scientist Herbert Spencer, who elaborated his theory of
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evolution in First Principles (1862).6 There, Spencer identified matter, motion, and force as the fundamental properties of the material world. Intensity, for Spencer, as well as Bergh, was a direct expression of the life force. Although Bergh did not directly refer to First Principles in his writings, he did quote Spencer in his 1893 essay Trinity (Treenighet), referring to Spencers 1861 polemic Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, which was first published in Swedish (Uppfostran) in 1883. There Spencer asserted the importance of artists understanding principles of psychology in order to create works that communicate effectively with their audience. To ask whether the composition of a picture is good, is really to ask how the perceptions and feelings of observers will be affected by it. (Spencer 1860, 80) Similarly, Bergh maintained that artists must observe and analyze the visible world in order to present it as a compelling, synthetic impression with careful attention to the effect that colour, form, and composition have on viewers. First when the painter understands how to give each and every one of his eye-catching colours and forms a spiritual significance, a meaning, a symbolic and suggestive value and between those elements create a communion of souls. . .then for the first time. . .do his fingers touch the invisible lyre that every viewer has within his breast. (Bergh 1908, 41) For Bergh, the challenge was to communicate on an impalpable, empathetic level with concrete means. The most effective way of doing so was through exaggeration and simplification. In On the Necessity of Exaggeration in Art (1886), Bergh applied his observations about music to art. Music played with mechanical exactitude neither reached the soul of the view nor left a lasting impression, according to Bergh (Bergh 1908, 2). Musicians who played with passionate engagement and interpreted the composers music with the combined forces of intellect and feeling did both. That is why, for Bergh, photography could not be considered art. Personal, singular inspiration is integral to the nature of art and without it there can be no talk of art. (Bergh 1908, 3) This was because inspiration constituted the human presence in art; it was the element that transformed art from a mechanical exercise to an entity that embodied and conveyed meaning. Inspiration, according to Bergh, could only be communicated through carefully controlled exaggeration. It was effective exaggeration that animated art. Although Bergh never alluded to the Pygmalion myth, he cast artists in a role analogous to Venus, goddess of love, who breathed life into Pygmalions precisely rendered sculpture of his ideal woman. For Bergh, it was not simply an artists passion that enabled him to communicate through exaggeration. Exaggeration must be harnessed to the desire to impart truth, a truth that comes from knowledge and understanding, a truth that can only be recognized through familiarity and careful study. In this way, the artist resembles the natural scientist observing, analyzing, and evaluating the world around him. In Notes on Portrait Painting, Including a Recipe for the Portrait Painter (1889), Bergh likened the artists need to recognize and utilize the emotional effects of painting, particularly colour and line, in order to convey the essence of his subject, the temperament of his sitter (Bergh 1908, 2425). To that end, Bergh believed it essential for artists to command a broad
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range of scientific knowledge, including natural science, the physics of colour and light. He identified the three guiding principles by which artists created a sense of unity and intensity in his essay Trinity: the decorative principle, the ideal or subjective principle, the realistic or objective principle. (Bergh 1908, 39) A painting that expressed in a compelling way the fundamental idea the artist sought to communicate was achieved by highlighting one of these principles and subordinating the other two. In order to make an appropriate choice, an artist must be sensitive to his audience. It was Berghs opinion that in his era, the decorative principle should dominate because it most effectively communicated the existence of a collective, empathetic spirit, whose lack in a competitive market economy was dangerously absent. The social stability and psychological security provided for centuries by village life came to a relatively abrupt end in nineteenth-century Sweden, and it was this crisis that Bergh became increasingly interested in addressing. Although some aspects of human psychology were universal, Bergh recognized in his 1892 essay on the contemporary Norwegian painters Erik Werenskiold and Fritz (sic) Thalow elements in their work that differed definitively from the Swedish temperament. In Werenskiolds illustrations of folk tales, for instance, Bergh felt himself transported to the undifferentiated consciousness of childhood:
In Werenskiolds hand we wander safely in this fantastic realm of giants and trolls and elves and kings and exuberant princesses and stooped over witches and animals with human thoughts, in this world where we feel that we have been once before, in which our childhood years most secret impressions and dreams come alive with all their fresh air free from prejudice. (Bergh 1908, 50)

To Bergh, Werenskiolds paintings were robust, nave, self-confident, and somewhat coarse, like the Norwegian landscape. This view harmonized with the principles of evolutionary biology that permeated late nineteenth-century thought. Organisms thrive in their native environment because of their symbiotic relationship with it. Thus, recognizing, expressing, and communicating the rootedness of an individual in a particular locale was, to Berghs mind, part of an artists duty to be honest. In his 1892 essay Intensity and Harmony, Bergh refined his geographical/racial theory, noting general differences between climate and temperament in the north (Scandinavia) and in the south (France, Italy), concluding that the desire for harmony characterized Latin culture, whereas Germanic culture was characterized by intensity (Bergh 1908, 64). Bergh read Alfred Fouilles Sensation and Thought (La psychologie des idees-forces, 1893), in which the French philosopher and psychologist elaborated his solidarism principle. Solidarism, which presumed the interdependence of people in society, regardless of how isolated and selfsufficient they might feel, accorded with Berghs own social ideas. Solidarism is a kind of restatement of Herbert Spencers principle of organic integration, which describes the cooperative behaviour among organs in animals and among individuals in societies that is central to his theory of evolution (Spencer 1910). Bergh may also have read the article The Major Conclusions
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of Contemporary Psychology in the 1891 issue of Revue des deux mondes, which maintained that individual body parts required the supervision of an overarching psyche in order to work in concert (Seigel 2005, 51213). In the case of a work of art, the overarching psyche for Bergh would correspond to the first burst of inspiration. While mysterious and inexplicable, he considered this unavoidable and catalytic inspiration a force of nature that mechanically propelled the artist. (Bergh 1908, 15) Bergh believed a scientific understanding of the technical aspects of painting, the physiological elements of perception, and the psychological mechanisms of interpretation were essential to the realization of truth to individual artistic vision. For instance, he relied on the research of French chemist Michel Eugne Chevreul and American physicist Nicolas Ogden Rood to analyze the reasons for the unusual intensity of colour in Erik Werenskiolds paintings (Bergh 1908, 65). In Karl Nordstrm and the Modern Mood Landscape (Karl Nordstrm och det moderna stmningslandskapet), written in 1896, Bergh discussed his study of the physiology of perception. Bergh cited the French historian Hippolyte Taines observation that all strong inner movements have a tendency to convert themselves into outer movements, in formulating his principle for the necessity of exaggerating colour and form in painting. He reiterated the notion first presented in On the Necessity of Exaggeration, noting that true art results from a strong emotional reaction. (Bergh 1908, 113) This intensity would not be conveyed by a near-literal description of the visual world, but required something more, which for Bergh meant exaggeration. The summation of Berghs understanding of science and the ways it explains the world and can be used to create meaningful works of art occurred in a lecture that Bergh held in 1903 at the Verdandi Circle in Uppsala: The Problem of Beauty from a Naturalistic Viewpoint (Det sknas problem frn naturalistisk synpunkt).7 He notes that then-current physiological research had shown that sense impressions affect people physically through automatic muscular movements as well as psychologically in the degree to which they feel a sense of well-being. Colours, shapes, movement, and sound stimulate individuals in ways in which they are rarely conscious. Bergh substantiates his assertion by citing the research of a variety of authorities: Vernon Lee (pseudonym of British writer Violet Paget), whose psychological aesthetics centred on the concept of empathy (with aesthetic responses having both physical and mental aspects);8 Finnish intellectual Yrj Hirn, author of Origins of Art: A Psychological and Sociological Inquiry (1900); and Charles Fr, author of The Pathology of Emotions (1899). The fact that Bergh refers to such recently published scholarship indicates his deep interest in the scientific aspects of aesthetics, developments with which he clearly kept up-to-date. But Bergh was clearly versed in earlier scientific literature as well, including Louis Pierre Gratiolets Concerning Physiognomy and the Movements of Expression (1865), which he quotes: When our desire is awakened as a result of some external impression, our entire organism sings a hymn of well-being and joy. (Bergh 1908, 202) Based on his own scientific reading and observations, Bergh concludes: Those qualities that we find beautiful in
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nature are always life-affirming, in other words either perpetually lifenurturing for humanity or temporarily stimulating for the individual. (Bergh 1908, 206) According to Bergh, the perception of harmony is the most important factor in adjudicating beauty. And harmony is directly related to the laws governing creation and change in nature. He argues vociferously against any notion of stasis and universality regarding aesthetic judgement, a position he defends as consistent with scientific principles, including evolution.9 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.

Notes
1

Handwritten notes by Bergh in Box 91, Folder 30 of the Bergh Archive attest to Berghs familiarity with key German figures of the Romantic movement, including Fichte, Goethe, Herder, Kant, Lessing, Novalis, Schiller, Schlegel, and Wackenroder. Among those that were at an early date concerned with the empathy theme and its role in the formation of a modern psychological aesthetic. . .were Volkert, Groos, Siebeck, and above all Lipp. Loose sheet of paper found in Box 92, Bergh Archive. For instance, an 1896 issue of the Munich journal Jugend included an apocryphal story about a young man who used the newly discovered power of radiation in his search for the perfect mate. If a womans heart was visible in a radiograph, it was made of stone, revealing an unsympathetic and inflexible character. If, however, her heart was invisible, it was flesh and blood, indicating a kindhearted soul. The New Rays, Jugend 1/5: 81. While surely written with humorous intentions, the story does convey the open-mindedness and uncertainty about the boundaries of science and fiction and the visible and unseen realms at the end of the nineteenth century. Noted on inside cover of notebook identified as Paris 1887. Located in Box 54 of the Bergh Archive.

These ideas were most famously expressed by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1819), but Bergh absorbed them from the Swedish military leader, architect, and art critic August Ehrensvrds study, The Free Arts Philosophy (De fria konsters filosofi, 1786). Bergh apparently did not consider Charles Darwin as important to the theory of evolution as we do today. In handwritten notes (probably made in Paris in the 1870s), Bergh writes in French: When Charles Darwin arrived in the world, evolutionary theories already had a significant place in the intellectual world. Box 92, Folder 52, Bergh Archive. Freningen Verdandi was a politically progressive student cultural organization at Uppsala University. Founded in 1882 by Karl Staaff, it sponsored frequent lectures and published essays by some of the most influential intellectuals and liberal political voices of the period, including those of Ellen Key and Hjalmar Branting. Lee explored these ideas in many of her writings, including Art and Life (1896) and In Umbria: A Study of Artistic Personality (1901). Bergh takes particular issue with fellow National Romantic Viktor Rydberg, who posits an objective and suprahuman standard of beauty based on mathematics (Bergh 1908, 21820).

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MICHELLE FACOS

Bibliography
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Notes on contributor
Michelle Facos is a professor of the History of Art at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA. She has published extensively on Nordic art in Gazette des Beaux Arts, Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte, Konsthistorisk tidskrift, and numerous edited volumes. Her Nationalism and the Nordic Painting: Swedish Art in the 1890s (California, 1998) was the first major study of this subject outside of Sweden. Her book Symbolist Art in Context (California) appeared in 2009, and she is now engaged in a study of the contribution of Swedens Jewish community to the promotion of national and regional identities in Sweden circa 1900. Correspondence to: mfacos@indiana.edu

INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE REVIEWS, Vol. 35 No. 1, March, 2010