Le jardin rose (Pink Garden) Alice Bailly moved from Geneva to Paris in 1906. She settled in rue Boissonade, a cul de sac that was already home to a number of artists and intellectuals from her native region, including Alexandre…
Le Pharo, Marseille Félix Vallotton and his wife Gabrielle visited Marseilles in the latter half of January 1901, on their way to Cannes to see their friend, the artist Édouard Vuillard. Back home in Paris, Vallotton painted two…
w.I.w.a.c. Peter Emch studied graphic design in Biel/Bienne from 1960 to 1965, then worked in advertising in Paris and Zurich for a number of years. He began teaching drawing in 1975 and gained some recognition as…
Moscou (Couvent Novodievitchi, la tour rose) (Moscow, the Novodevichy Convent, the Pink Tower) The Russian school, long dominated by The Itinerants, opened up to Western art at the dawn of the twentieth century. Groups and reviews influenced by Symbolism came into being, including World of Art and The…
L’Exécution du Major Davel (The Execution of Major Davel) This work, the most monumental of all Charles Gleyre’s paintings, was commissioned at the behest of Marc-Louis Arlaud, who founded the Museum in 1841. He provided the funding and chose the subject, Major Jean-Daniel-Abraham Davel…
Scène de la vie romaine or La Joueuse de harpe (Scene from Roman Life or The Harpist) After settling in Rome, the Swiss artist Jacques Sablet turned away from history painting and spent the late 1780s building his reputation as a genre painter. He worked in three main directions: moral scenes reflecting…
Paysans au musée or À l’exposition (Peasants at the Museum or At the Axhibition) Marc Vautier, a native of the Vaud, had been a successful artist in Düsseldorf for fifteen years when he painted this work. He specialised in scenes of rural life, innovating in this work by bringing…
Grand nu couché or Nu étendu avec chien (Large reclining nude or Nude reclining with dog) On September 30, 1923, the poet Gustave Roud described René Auberjonois in La Gazette de Lausanne as an unfairly overlooked master of ‘pure painting’, adding ‘French-speaking Switzerland remains silent. In vain would you seek even…
La Neige à Auvers (Snow in Auvers) Maurice de Vlaminck caused a scandal at the 1905 autumn salon in Paris with Henri Matisse and André Derain for canvases that combined colours at their most intense with exacerbated expression and vigorous brushwork. Vlaminck’s…
Nature morte aux glaïeuls (Still Life With Gladioli) ‘I am deep in a still life, the ordinary expedient of bad days, but by applying myself I manage to save the day. […] I keep up the still lifes and go from flowers to…