Exhibition Review:
Albert Anker und Paris
at the Kunstmuseum, Berne
May 23 - August 31, 2003
Switzerland is known for showing respect for her native sons. The country often sponsors
large-scale exhibitions devoted to the work of Swiss-born artists, such as Alberto Giacometti,
Paul Klee, Jean Tinguely, and Le Corbusier, to name just a few. Many Swiss artists, in
particular those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, established careers outside
of Switzerland. There was no established Swiss art school for much of that time, so the
French-speaking Swiss artists ventured to Paris, the German-speaking ones traveled to Berlin,
Dresden or Dusseldorf, and those with an Italian tongue crossed the border into Italy,
settling in Rome or Florence. It was often only later, once these artists were famous
elsewhere, that they were welcomed back by their motherland with open arms. This is
completely understandable - almost everyone, artist or not, must leave the nest and prove
themselves out in the world before gaining the respect of those who know them best. One
can add to this group of Swiss expatriates the bernois Realist painter Albert
Anker (1831-1910), who is the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in
Bern, Switzerland.
Anker moved to Paris after his taste for theology, which he had been
studying at the university in Bern, began to wane. He had visited the Société
des amis des arts in Neuchâtel as a young boy and took drawing lessons from Louis
Wallinger (1819-1886). A trip to Germany brought him to the doorstep of the
Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, ultimately changing the course of his life. Finally, after
receiving the blessing of his father, Anker moved to Paris in 1854 to study with
Charles Gleyre (1806-1874), the latter probably one of the single most important art
teachers in France at mid-century. (It is somewhat amusing to realize that Anker
had to travel from Bern to Paris to receive lessons from another Swiss expatriate.) Anker
was also in attendance at the Ecole des beaux-arts in Paris in the late 1850s.
The curators of the Bern exhibition want visitors to realize straight
away that without doubt Anker was very successful in Paris and elsewhere. Exhibited
prominently in the first gallery is Anker's gold medal from the Salon of 1866. Additionally
in this space, Anker's painting entitled The Little Architect of 1867 is displayed
next to two prints of the image, an engraving published jointly by Goupil in Berlin
and Knoedler in New York, and a lithograph published by W. Schaus of New York.
Anker was a specialist in the depiction of children and of genre
painting in general, and this was key to his success. Evident in his works is the
idea that people from the country are more pious and innocent than those from the
big cities; children and adults are shown praying, learning, and paying their debts.
The adults are all dutiful and the children are all clean-scrubbed and charming.
His most accomplished painting, a portrait of his daughter Louise (1874, Museum
Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur), is excellently painted with a bright
palette of blues and whites, and some very impressionistic brushwork at the hat
in Louise's hand. To a certain extent, there is a sticky-sweetness to Anker's
paintings of children that does make ones teeth ache. His Two Children Sleeping
in a Bed (1891, Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Winterthur) is
absolutely skillful in its texture and drawing, but there is a cuteness to the
figures that borders on the absurd. Anker has them so tightly tucked into bed
that their heads look severed, glued to each other, and nailed to the pillows;
yet they are so adorable, who could care?
After going through the exhibition further, I had to rethink
my evaluation of Anker's works as being saccharine. I was impressed by his evaluation
of social and class constructs in some of his larger paintings, in particular his
Sale to the Highest Bidders (1891, Private Collection) and The Little
Friend (1862, Kunstmuseum Berne). In Sale to the Highest Bidders, a
poor woman dressed in black cries into a handkerchief while a child stands behind her,
with a hand on her own heart. Two auctioneers are selling off their things, while a
third searches the woman's closets for more loot. The interior is packed with figures,
people of the same class status and possibly the friends of the woman being punished.
One cannot help but feel badly for the woman, not so much in a sentimental way,
but in a modern, "we-are-all-up-to-our-ears-in-debt-too" way. The child
suffering for the older woman is poignant and signals the pain children do feel at
their parents upsets, a point of departure for many a sociological study of the
present day.
The Little Friend depicts a woman in black standing over her
dead female child, while other very young children stand around the bed in mourning. There
is a striking contrast within the scene: one boy, seemingly the mother's remaining child,
mourns at her side, while directly opposite another boy, finger outstretched, attempts
to poke at the foot of the deceased child, to check to make sure she's dead. It is in
many ways a minor element, possibly a touch of lighthearted amusement in an otherwise
horribly sad image. But it also speaks volumes about another touchy subject - how and
when to teach children about death. The second boy's curiosity will lead to his eventual
understanding that death is forever. Anker seems to know children well (he had five of
his own) and their feelings and inquisitiveness about the world around them are often
displayed with convincing detail. Mary Cassatt was an excellent painter of this genre,
and yet her portrayal of children, who often look dopey and over-stuffed, seems to
lack the psychological depth that is evident in Anker's. In a sad connection to this
painting, Anker lost one of his own children, Franz Adolf Rudolf (called Ruedi), who died
at the tender age of two in 1869. Anker made a painting of Ruedi in his deathbed that is
unfortunately not in the show but is pictured in the exhibition catalogue (p. 218).
Also in connection with class status, one must also mention Breakfast: Poor
(1866, Private Collection, Bern) and Breakfast: Rich (1866). In the former, an uncovered
table contains a simple loaf of bread, an old coffee pot, tarnished silverware, and some
crockery that must have seen better mornings. In the latter, the table is covered with
linen, tiny rolls are offered in a bowl, the cups are perfect, the silverware service is
glistening, and we have some visible sugar cubes. But here is the point: the breakfast is
still bread and coffee. So rich or poor, Anker seems to remind the viewer that there are
some elements of the scattered, divergent lives of people from countries spanning the
globe that are part of a shared cultural and social consciousness.
The exhibition also contains fine works by François Bonvin (1817-1887),
Jules Breton (1827-1906), Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1898), Charles Chaplin (1825-1891,
another underrated but important teacher), Gleyre, Victoria Fantin-Latour (née Dubourg,
1840-1926), and, of course, Edouard Manet (1832-1883). A catalogue accompanies the
exhibition with essays by William Hauptman, Petra Chu, and others (in German only,
ISBN 3-7272-1092-3). Switzerland has done well to welcome home a national treasure with
this appealing exhibition.
[To learn more about Albert Anker, visit www.albert-anker.ch]
Caterina Y. Pierre
Fribourg, Switzerland
14 July 2003
Copyright 2003 © Caterina Y. Pierre; all rights reserved
No portion of this text may be used without the written permission of the author
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