La femme de Putiphar (Potiphar’s wife) The Book of Genesis recounts how Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel, was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. His new owner was the pharaoh’s guard Potiphar, whose wife tried to seduce him.
Saint-Saphorin This large painting depicts the village of Saint-Saphorin, recognisable from the unfinished church steeple. The brown tones of the stepped Lavaux vineyards and the Alpine foothills dusted with snow indicate that winter is on its…
Les Bourla-Papey (The Bourla-Papey Insurrection) François Bocion trained under Charles Gleyre in Paris, trying his hand at history painting on his return to Lausanne where he worked for the rest of his career. His major works in the genre are…
Le prêtre pêchant (Priest angling) The painter and copperplate engraver Jakob Lorenz Rüdisühli moved to Basel in 1868. There, he set about popularising drawings by leading Swiss artists in several sets of prints that he later published as Schweizerisches Künstler-Album.
Esquisse pour Les Mariages germains (Sketch for The Germanic Wedding) Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours, born in Geneva and trained in Paris, was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1780. However, as a Swiss Protestant, he was not allowed to join the city’s French Academy and spent the…
La Mort de Socrate (The Death of Socrates) Gabriel-Constant Vaucher, the son of an enamel painter, studied drawing in Geneva before moving to Rome where he trained with his cousin, the painter Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours. Together, they promoted the neo-classical style in Geneva. Vaucher…
Portrait d’un jeune patricien (Portrait of a young patrician) Unusually for French-speaking Swiss artists of his generation, Benjamin-Samuel Bolomey, a native of Lausanne, emigrated to Holland for a career at the royal court. He trained in Paris, rubbing shoulders with the pupils of François…
Baigneuses (Women bathing) Jules Blancpain was born to the famous watchmaking dynasty of the same name and trained in watchmaking in Saint-Imier with a view to joining the family business, until a trip to Florence set him on…
Panthère (Panther) André Lasserre began his career in Paris as a student of Antoine Bourdelle at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière before moving to Lausanne in 1951 and turning to constructivist abstraction. While in Paris in…
Maquette pour le rideau de scène de L’Histoire du Soldat (Scale model stage curtain for The Soldier’s Tale) In 1916, as the First World War was raging, Pablo Picasso designed a stage curtain for Parade. The show with texts by Jean Cocteau and music by Erik Satie, premiered in Paris in 1917 by…