Monday, September 3, 2012

Anker, Albert

Marie Anker
oil on canvas
65 x 81cm
Kunst Museum, Bern, Switzerland

Albert Samuel Anker (1831 - 1910) was a Swiss painter who has been called the "national painter" of Switzerland because of his enduringly popular depictions of 19th-century Swiss village life.

His paintings depict his fellow citizens in an unpretentious and plain manner, without idealizing country life, but also without the critical examination of social conditions.
His meticulous paintings of Swiss rural life endeared him to the public and during his heydays, he was considered as the most popular artist. His works captured the daily and social life of the rustics in the picturesque villages of Switzerland. He portrayed the social life of villagers as plain and unpretentious. He depicted men and women without any judgment or idealizing their social condition. Though he had a Christian world-view, he did not, in any way, impose his ideology on his paintings.


He had six children, two of whom died very early in life. he depicted his surviving children in some of his paintings. He died in 1910 at the age of 79 at his house in Anet, Switzerland. Many Swiss postage stamps and other media have incorporated Anker's work. His studio in Ins has been preserved as a museum by the Albert Anker Foundation.