19th Century

Emilie Linder embraced the ideals of the Nazarene movement—an early nineteenth-century group of painters that sought to restore spirituality and moral authority through their artworks and whom she had encountered in Munich and Rome. The Nazarenes rejected the indulgent style of the rococo as well as the detached elegance of classicism. Instead, they turned to Christian themes and aimed for a sober sincerity in their visual language.

Linder focused on religious subjects throughout her career. Thanks to her financial independence, she was largely shielded from the professional barriers many women artists faced at the time. As men increasingly saw women as competitors, female artists were often excluded from academies, exhibitions, and professional associations. Linder also built a substantial art collection and, beginning in 1841, started to donate it to her hometown of Basel in several installments. It included Late Gothic works originally acquired by her grandfather, Johann Konrad Dienast.

Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin and his family experienced periods of financial hardship, hunger, and disease, such as typhoid and cholera; eight of his fourteen children died at an early age. Yet, Böcklin eventually achieved professional success. His enigmatic and evocative paintings, such as Isle of the Dead, resonated deeply with the spirit of the late nineteenth century. His final self-portrait, in which he proudly presents himself at the peak of his career, was commissioned for the art collection of Basel, where he was born. Today, the Kunstmuseum houses the most significant repository of his works.

Contemporary opinion on Böcklin was divided: some viewed him as a reactionary, others as prescient. Likewise, his interest in classical mythology was seen either as a reflection of nationalist convictions or as a sign of his engagement with universal, timeless themes. His rejection of traditional academic ideals of physical beauty in favor of his own imagination seemed eccentric at the time but, from a present-day perspective, his work appears visionary.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, numerous artists sought to find compelling visual expressions for fundamental human experiences. Although the works commonly associated with symbolism differ in style, they share a key characteristic: they suggest something beyond what is literally shown. A landscape or a figure can thus become a metaphor for inner states or universal ideas.

Giovanni Segantini, for example, depicts a peasant woman and cows at a watering trough, set in a barren mountain landscape. Here, thirst and water—symbolizing the essence of life—connect human and animal existence. In Ferdinand Hodler’s painting, a solitary, hunched figure embodies a feeling of despair, while Arnold Böcklin utilizes an image of a staircase to represent the ups and downs of life’s journey from birth until death.

Frank Buchser is considered one of the most stylistically versatile Swiss painters of his generation. Unlike many of his contemporaries who stayed within a single national or stylistic school, Buchser's works shift dramatically depending on where he worked and what he depicted. After training in France and Italy, he traveled extensively across Spain, Morocco, and North America. The artist’s early works—mythological and allegorical subjects such as Prometheus Forged on a Rock and Asceticism and the Joy of Living—reflect academic conventions.
But travel gradually transformed his approach. During his stay in the United States, from 1866 to 1871, Buchser captured a nation grappling with the aftermath of the Civil War. He portrayed American presidents and civil rights leaders, but also Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee, who were fighting to keep slavery, and Black soldiers and civilians whose lives bore witness to the unfinished fight for equality. His paintings, such as The Return of the Volunteer, document the contradictions and divisions of a country at a crossroads. Today, Buchser’s work invites viewers to consider the forces that shaped the 19th century—and how art can both reflect and participate in histories of nationalism, racism, and memory.

In 1861, Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne, then aged thirty and twenty-one respectively, crossed paths in Paris and quickly discovered that they had a lot in common. Both aimed at making a living through their art while leaving behind the prevailing academic style that favored grand history painting. Much like other impressionist artists, they worked in the open air, often side by side, trying to capture their fleeting observations of the landscape on their canvases.

Throughout his life, Pissarro focused on rural subjects, championing the working lives of farmers and villagers. Cezanne, while also concerned with landscape, gradually developed a more experimental approach. He strove to convey not just whatever met the eye, but also the emotions that might evoke. His technique of applying small daubs of paint was intended to weave the disparate elements of a painting into a unified whole by blending sensation and structure, the seen and the felt.

Ferdinand Hodler is considered as one of Switzerland’s most renowned artists. To imbue his representations of nature, people, and emotions with symbolic meaning and universal relevance, he distilled his motifs to their core elements, meticulously attending to the smallest details. Especially in his lineation, whether defining mountain silhouettes or the contours of the human form, such as in the figure in Communion with the Infinite, Hodler strove to achieve both rhythmic dynamism and a sense of inner harmony.

At the turn of the century, Hodler was inundated with commissions for private portraits and murals in public buildings in Switzerland. He often created multiple versions of popular paintings that sold well. His tireless work earned him significant success across Europe. During the early twentieth century there was such a surge of artistic innovation that Hodler’s work was already perceived as classically timeless during his own lifetime.