Ferdinand Hodler painted this landscape at the foot of the Salève, near Veyrier, in the countryside outside Geneva. This is the largest of some fifteen scenes of the marshland he worked on between 1888 and…

Like many other artists, Marius Borgeaud spent much of his career painting in Brittany. But while others focused on picturesque Breton scenes, from widows mourning husbands lost at sea to traditional costumes, sunsets, and religious…

The spring of 1838 saw Charles Gleyre return to Paris after a lengthy tour of the eastern Mediterranean. It took him until 1843 to digest and synthesise his experiences in Le Soir ou Les Illusions…

In June 1918, Alice Bailly became acquainted with Werner Reinhart, a German-speaking Swiss philanthropist renowned for his patronage of the arts. The pair met in Geneva at the home of the artist Alexandre Cingria. Werner…

This life-sized bust was commissioned by the Directoire, which hailed Napoléon Bonaparte as a hero on his return from the Italian campaign in December 1797. He sat for an initial version in plaster before setting…

Alice Bailly was on the cusp of turning forty when her decision to adopt an avant-garde style paid off in Paris. She became friends with Guillaume Apollinaire, spent time with Sonia and Robert Delaunay, and…

Eugène Grasset was something of a paradox. Though considered in his day as the artist who best captured the essence of womanhood, he expressed gross misogyny in his private diaries: “men and women differ not…

After Alice Bailly moved to Paris in 1906, she began to move in Fauvist circles. At the start of the 1910s, her style changed dramatically as she encountered the Cubists in Montparnasse. It is fair…

Émile David studied with Barthélémy Menn in Geneva and Charles Gleyre in Paris before heading for Italy in 1848. He spent much of his time in Rome with his fellow artists, Étienne Duval and Auguste…

Charles Gleyre achieved instant success at the 1843 Paris Salon with Le Soir (Evening), an Orientalist reverie that won a Second Class medal and was acquired by the French state. Two years later, on a…