Although a number of secondary sources note that George Hall was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, the artist's own statement, as recorded by the historian George Stevens, places the event in Boston. Whatever the case, it was in the latter city that Hall was raised and where, at age sixteen, he decided to become an artist. At first he painted portraits and genre scenes, the sale of which enabled him to go to Europe in 1849. His traveling companion was Eastman Johnson. The two artists enrolled in the Düsseldorf Akademie, where Hall remained for over a year. He then traveled through France, Switzerland, and Italy and had a studio in Rome for a time before returning to America. He settled in New York but for the rest of his life made frequent trips to Europe, spending much time in Rome and also going to Spain, Egypt, and Palestine in the 1870s.
Although Hall told Stevens that he considered himself to be primarily a figure painter, from around 1857 he became increasingly known as a specialist in still life. He held successful sales of examples in this genre, the first of which took place in 1860; the works were shown at the National Academy prior to auction. While he was in Spain in the early 1860s, he even had an exhibition of still lifes in Seville. But as William H. Gerdts has pointed out, by 1868 Hall was again concentrating on genre scenes, possibly in response to negative criticism of his traditionally constructed still lifes. The latter did not dominate his oeuvre again until the 1880s.
Hall began a long history of exhibiting at the National Academy in 1853, showing paintings with a wide variety of subject matter: depictions of historical events and people, scenes from Shakespeare, and European genre paintings as well as still lifes. He was also an active contributor to exhibitions at the Boston Athenaeum, the American Art-Union, and the Brooklyn Art Association. He resigned his first appointment as Associate National Academician in 1855 because, as he wrote, he was "opposed to the present system of conferring honors, and particularly to the creating of Associates without voice or power in the institution." He later changed his mind, accepting renomination in 1863.
He was a member of the Union League Club and Century Association and, beginning around 1874, had a studio for a number of years in New York's Tenth Street Studio Building.
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