Guided tour · For everyone · Switzerland · 1746–1922

Artists of Switzerland in the world's museums

Ten artists born or at home in Switzerland, from Liotard to Klee, in nine museums around the world.

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Works

10

Time

about 16 min

Collections

9

About this tour

Switzerland is small, but its artists went far: to Paris, London, Rome, Florence and Munich. Their works are now in museums around the world, from Los Angeles to Copenhagen, and one is at home in Zurich. Here are ten of them, in the order they were made. At every work, look first, then discover.

We begin in 1746, with Jean-Étienne Liotard from Geneva.

The 10 works

1. 

   Work 1 of 10

   Marianne Lavergne, niece of the artist, known as "La Liseuse"

   Jean-Étienne Liotard · 1746 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

   Liotard signed this pastel with more than his name. Can you find it?

   His name, J.E. Liotard, and below it 'lion 1746': the city of Lyon, as he spelt it, and the year.

   Liotard was born in Geneva in 1702. He called this pastel La Liseuse, the reader, though the model is his niece in the costume of Lyon. In 1748 he took it to Versailles, to show the French court what he could do with pastel.

2. 

   Work 2 of 10

   Cascade dessus Wasserberg (Waterfall above Wasserberg)

   Caspar Wolf · about 1774 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

   A huge waterfall pours down the cliff. How big is it? Look for the people.

   Two tiny figures on the rock. One of them points up at the waterfall.

   Caspar Wolf, born in Muri in Aargau in 1735, was one of the first artists to climb into the high Alps and paint them. The caption at the bottom says where this is: the canton of Schwyz.

3. 

   Work 3 of 10

   A Dancing Young Woman as Terpsichore

   Angelica Kauffmann · about 1780 · Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland

   Terpsichore is the muse of dance. Is she standing still?

   No: one foot in a sandal steps out from under her dress, and the dress swings out behind her. She is caught in the middle of a step.

   Kauffmann was born in Chur in 1741. In London she was one of only two women among the founders of the Royal Academy. This dancer was inspired by ancient Roman wall paintings, newly dug up at Herculaneum.

4. 

   Work 4 of 10

   Lord Rivers's Stud Farm, Stratfield Saye

   Jacques-Laurent Agasse · 1807 · Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

   Horses everywhere. But who has come to visit them?

   Two boys: a small one in a red jacket and a tall black hat, and an older one in a dark coat. A black and white dog sniffs the grass nearby.

   Agasse was born in Geneva in 1767. In 1800 he moved to London, where he painted horses, dogs and other animals for the rest of his life. He died there in 1849.

5. 

   Work 5 of 10

   Island of the Dead

   Arnold Böcklin · 1880 · The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

   A small boat crosses the dark water to the island. Who is on board?

   A figure wrapped in white stands behind a draped coffin. A rower sits at the back.

   Böcklin, born in Basel in 1827, painted this for Marie Berna, as a memorial to her late husband. At her request he added the coffin and the shrouded figure. He painted three more versions later, and the scene inspired the composer Rachmaninoff.

6. 

   Work 6 of 10

   La Jungfrau

   Félix Vallotton · 1892 · Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, Zürich

   Only black ink and bare paper. What shines in the night sky?

   A thin crescent moon and a few stars, cut out of the black.

   This is a woodcut: everything white was cut away from the wooden block. Vallotton, born in Lausanne in 1865, lived in Paris, where his black and white woodcuts made him famous. This print is at home in Zurich, in the Graphische Sammlung of ETH Zurich.

7. 

   Work 7 of 10

   Spring in the Alps

   Giovanni Segantini · 1897 · J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

   Look closely at the clouds and the grass. How did Segantini paint them?

   In thin threads of pure colour, laid side by side. From a distance they shimmer like mountain light.

   Segantini lived and worked in Graubünden. This is Val Bregaglia, near the village of Soglio, whose church tower you can see on the right. A girl in the local costume leads two horses, a sower scatters seed, and a dog keeps watch.

8. 

   Work 8 of 10

   Self-Portrait with Hat

   Ottilie W. Roederstein · 1904 · Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

   She looks straight back at us. Where did she sign the picture?

   OWR, her initials, and the year: 1904.

   Ottilie Roederstein was born in Zurich in 1859 and worked in Frankfurt. She painted more than eighty self-portraits. She showed this one, with its loose brushstrokes and light colours, at the Paris Salon the year after.

9. 

   Work 9 of 10

   Lake Geneva with the Savoy Alps

   Ferdinand Hodler · 1907–1911 · Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

   Hodler built this landscape in bands, one above the other. How many can you count?

   Shore, water, mist, more water, the blue mountains of Savoy, clouds and sky. Hodler called this repeating of forms 'parallelism'.

   Hodler was born in Bern in 1853 and lived in Geneva. He painted this lake again and again, almost always without people: only water, mountains and sky.

10. 

    Work 10 of 10

    Haus der Firma Z (Company Z's house)

    Paul Klee · 1922 · SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen

    The title promises the house of 'Company Z'. Can you find the Z?

    There it is: a bold black Z, among the fine lines of the house.

    Paul Klee was born near Bern in 1879. In 1922 he was teaching at the Bauhaus in Germany. Along the bottom he wrote the year, the work's number and its title: he kept a careful list of everything he made.

The end of the tour

Ten artists, nine museums.

Pastel, watercolour, oil and woodcut, from 1746 to 1922. Most of these artists went abroad to work, and their works travelled further still. Paul Klee came back to Bern in 1933 and died in Switzerland in 1940.

Questions at the end

Start this tour in Auriaan

Works from these collections

• Rijksmuseum
• National Gallery of Art
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Yale Center for British Art
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich
• J. Paul Getty Museum
• Städel Museum
• SMK – National Gallery of Denmark

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