Ferdinand Hodler Étude pour Unanimité (Study for Unanimity), 1911/1912 The development of a Swiss national art policy in the 1880s and 1890s led to numerous government commissions for important buildings. Paradoxically, the polemic that…
Albert Marquet Les deux pêcheurs à Naples (Two Anglers in Naples), 1911 1905 marked the beginning of what Albert Marquet's wife Marcelle referred to as his ‘travelling period’. The artist, whose works generate a sense of quiet…
Louis Ducros Le marchand de fritures (The Fried Food Vendor), 1782 In Rome, bustling street scenes featuring contemporaries in local costume became an increasingly successful genre in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Popular with…
Maurice Denis Baigneuses (Bathers) or Plage au petit temple (Petit Temple Beach), 1906 Displayed at the 1906 Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts and acquired in 1907 by Eugène Boch, the brother of the famous Belgian painter…
René Auberjonois La route valaisanne (Road in the Valais), 1940 - 1941 René Auberjonois first stayed in the Valais in 1902 and was stunned by the ‘great spectacle of the landscapes’. His life soon acquired a pendulum…
Félix Vallotton Le grand nuage (The Great Cloud), 1900 Félix Vallotton and his wife Gabrielle spent the summer of 1900 in the chateau of La Naz in Romanel, overlooking Lausanne. The views over the…
On display Francesco da Rimini Naissance de la Vierge (The Birth of the Virgin), c. 1320–30 This representation of the birth of the Virgin bathes in the universality of the divine presence manifested by the gold ground. At the centre, we…
Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier (L'Aîné) Étude pour le Retour des jeunes mariés (Study for the Homecoming), 1881 In 1898, the Swiss-born artist Benjamin Vautier died in Düsseldorf, where he had spent most of his career. He was feted by the media as…
Léo-Paul Robert Étude pour La Justice élève les nations (Study for Righteousness Exalteth a Nation), 1901 Léo-Paul Robert, a native of Neuchâtel, was born into a family of painters including his father Aurèle and his uncle Léopold. He studied in Munich…
Emile David Polyphème (Polyphemus), between 1860 and 1870 Only in the early seventeenth century did landscape painting become a noted genre in its own right in Rome, when vedute, or topographical views, became…
Charles Gleyre Les Romains passant sous le joug (Romans Passing under the Yoke) or La bataille du Léman (The Battle of Léman), 1858 Charles Gleyre’s republican convictions explain his enthusiastic acceptance of a commission from the radical new government in his native Canton of Vaud. He was asked…
On display Charles Gleyre Femme turque (Dudo Narikos) [Turkish woman (Dudo Narikos)], 1840 On his return to Paris in 1838 after a lengthy journey in the Mediterranean in the pay of the American John Lowell Jr., Charles Gleyre…
On display Luca Giordano Le jugement de Salomon (The Judgement of Solomon), c. 1670–85 This painting illustrates an episode in the Old Testament. Two prostitutes, who had given birth at the same moment, both claim to be the mother…
Charles Gleyre Autoportrait (Self-Portrait), between 1830 and 1834 Charles Gleyre was a modest, reserved, shy man who rarely painted himself. He found his prominent nose and fleshy lips unattractive and only painted three…
Félix Vallotton La paresse (Idleness), 1896 By 1900, Vallotton was renowned in Paris as one of the major protagonists in the revival of printmaking. He had begun making drypoint works and…
Albert Welti Portrait de famille (Family Portrait), 1904 A number of features in this family portrait reflect the influence of the Northern Old Masters, including the historiated frame carved by the artist himself,…
Johann Friedrich August Tischbein Portrait de Nicolas Châtelain, c. 1800–10 Nicolas Châtelain and Johann Friedrich August Tischbein – the model and his painter – both belonged to grand dynasties. Châtelain, the son of a pastor,…
On display Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours Le tremblement de terre (The Earthquake), 1806 Trained in Paris in the studio of Joseph-Marie Vien, Saint-Ours set up in Rome in 1780. In 1792 he returned to Geneva to fight for…
On display François Diday Le glacier du Rosenlaui (The Rosenlaui Glacier), 1841 François Diday studied fine art in Geneva and then in Antoine-Jean Gros’ studio in Paris. He showed his work regularly at the Paris Salon, where…
On display Auguste Baud-Bovy Lioba! Berger de l’Oberland bernois rappelant son troupeau (Lioba! A Shepherd in the Bernese Oberland Calling back His Flock), 1886 In 1882, Auguste Baud-Bovy left Geneva for Paris to be with his Communard friends and the artists of the French-Swiss colony. During his time there…
Paul Friedrich Wilhelm Balmer Quatre frères (Four Brothers), 1903/4 This long frieze juxtaposes head-and-shoulders portraits of the artist's family. To the left are his older sons Rico and Jean-Jacques in Russian costumes, then Luc,…
Edgar Degas Femme s’essuyant la nuque (Woman Drying Her Neck), c. 1903 Degas produced some two hundred pastels on the theme of women washing, placing the emphasis on the action itself: the figure is presented in close…
Charles Gleyre Etude d’un Nubien (Study of a Nubian), between 1835 and 1837 Charles Gleyre had been in Rome for five years when, in spring 1834, he had the opportunity to live the dream that obsessed all Romantics:…
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen Fortifs (Fortifications), 1886 When Paris was modernised during the Second Empire, the poorest sectors of the population were driven out of the city's historic centre. Like Vincent van…
Luigi Monteverde Raisins (Grapes), 1889 Monteverde's childhood was divided between Lugano, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo, where his brother, a painter and decorator, taught him his trade. In 1870, Monteverde travelled…
On display Cuno Amiet Portrait d'Anna Amiet (Portrait of Anna Amiet), 1923 Solothurn-born Cuno Amiet, a long-standing friend of Giovanni Giacometti since their days studying art in Munich and sharing lodgings and a studio in Paris in…
Jacques Sablet Le peintre dans son atelier avec ses parents (The Painter in his Studio with his Parents), 1781 Jacques Sablet was thirty-two when he took the painful decision to move on from history painting, having moved to Rome in a failed attempt to…
