"Tour de Suisse" with Minor Swiss Masters from the Neher Collection
On February 28th, 2018, @ArsGraphica Swiss visited Museum Allerheiligen (@m_allerheiligen) in Schaffhausen and went on a guided tour with co-curator Monique Meyer through the splendid exhibition „Tour de Suisse“.
At the entrance, some magnifying glasses were waiting to be carried around through this show about one of the biggest collections of Minor Swiss Masters in Switzerland besides the Gugelmann Collection at the Swiss National Library in Berne.
The Bernhard Neher Collection / Oscar Neher Foundation Donation came to the Museum Allerheiligen in 2013. With support from Matthias Fischer, the curator of Paintings and Prints, Monique Meyer analysed, inventorised, and digitised the collection which comprises more than 2000 works on paper before curating the ongoing show with some of its highlights.
In half a dozen rooms the exhibition displays a vast survey of landscapes representing all major tourist attractions in Switzerland. Besides landscapes, costume paintings were a part of this new tradition too. Both landscapes and costume paintings were the result of the rise of the traditional educational trip, the “grand tour,” on which artists reproduced their works as originals or colored prints and sold them to travelers.
By bringing the manifold visual techniques of the period between 1750 and 1850 back to life, the exhibition also introduces visitors to Swiss legends and myths as they were invented and embellished by the emerging tourist industry. Furthermore, one of the most interesting issues are the differences of compositions in drawings, watercolors, and finally prints representing the same subject which expose the complex varieties of techniques and methods used by the artists.
