Auctions: summit meeting at Koller in Zurich

The man may be represented alone on this canvas, but it nonetheless tells the story of a beautiful friendship. The one that unites the two Swiss artists Cuno Amiet, author of the portrait, and Ferdinand Hodler, its subject. The work dates from 1898. They had met five years earlier. Hodler, the 40-year-old Bernese, was a recognized artist. Amiet was only 25 and his career was just beginning. His admiration for his elder, on the other hand, was already well anchored. Their exchanges will only be more intense.

On sale at Koller on June 21 in Zurich, as part of the Swiss Art session, for an estimate ranging between 250,000 and 400,000 francs, this portrait was commissioned by the German Oscar Miller, one of the collectors of the most influential genre of its time. He began his collection in 1896, when he was director of the Biberist paper factory in Solothurn, Switzerland, Cuno Amiet’s hometown.

Sensitive backdrop

The following year, he visited the young painter’s studio, accompanied by Hodler and another Bernese artist, Fritz Widmann. What followed was the order and Amiet’s repeated visits to Hodler’s workshop in the Bern arsenal. The latter was in the process of developing the preparatory boxes for the three frescoes intended for the hall of honor of the National Museum in Zurich. We see them in the background.

Presented in 1900, they were to illustrate the battles of Murten (1476) and Marignan (1515). Two important episodes in Swiss history. The director of the establishment, Heinrich Angst, therefore expected images that would arouse a strong sense of national pride and attract the attention of both the public and tourists. Provocative, Hodler chooses instead to shake up the viewer and make him think by making him live from the inside the experience of ordinary Swiss soldiers in combat. Enough to underline their courage, especially at the time of their defeat and the retreat of the troops. The violent controversy that this gesture generated is also what this portrait of Amiet tells.

It is presented here in its first version, painted in the workshop and not transposed into a tighter official format. The second version, which was first chosen by the sponsor before finally being exchanged for the more spontaneous one, is kept at the Kunstmuseum Solothurn.

Serenity and madness

No wonder this painting by Cuno Amiet is among the top lots of the sale. However, it is not him who displays the highest estimation. This goes to the oil on canvas by Ferdinand Hodler, “Lake Geneva with the Jura”: 1.6 – 2.4 million francs. Created around 1911 following the principles of his theory of parallelism, it exudes all the more power and serenity as it depicts a landscape tending towards abstraction.

And we will also note the presence of two works by Louis Soutter, a representative of Art Brut whose journey oscillates between madness and genius, and who would probably be unknown to this day without the intervention of his famous cousin Le Corbusier, by the writer Jean Giono or the artists René Auberjonois and Jean Dubuffet.

The fact remains that the sale of Swiss art closes, before that of impressionist and modern art, this spring’s auctions at Koller. These begin on June 17 with watchmaking and the “Out of this world” session. After which come Asian art, jewelry, prints and multiples, then post-war art and contemporary works.

Sylvie Lefebvre-Guerreiro has been editor-in-chief of Tribune des Arts magazine since 2021. Journalist with the same title since January 2000, she specializes in art, watchmaking and jewelry.More informations

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