(Deutsch) Der Genfersee und seine Artisten

2 April 2021

Lake Geneva is one of the thousands of large and small lakes worldwide. In the middle, the lake also forms the border with France and is not Switzerland’s largest lake. That is Lake Neuchâtel.

However, Lake Geneva is the most famous lake in Europe. It is reflected, among other things, in the many globally renowned characters who have lived, worked and lived by the lake, for example, Charlie Chaplin, Madame de Staël, Calvin or Le Corbusier.

The Lake Geneva Museum (Musée du Léman) in Nyon has visualised this by depicting 16 other personalities on and in the building with their accessories, instruments, works or other characteristic objects.

These sixteen are Anna de Noailles (1876-1933), poet; Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-1947), writer; Mary Shelley (1797-1851), writer; Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), writer and philosopher; Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846), writer and creator of cartoons; Hergé́ (1907-1983), cartoonist; Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), painter; Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), painter; Elizabeth de Wittelsbach, or Empress Sisi, (1837-1898); Ritchie Blackmore (1945), guitarist of Deep Purple; Jean-Luc Godard (1930) filmmaker; Ella Maillart (1903-1997), writer; Auguste Piccard (1884-1962), scientist and explorer; Jacques Piccard (1922-2008), scientist and explorer; Jean-Daniel Colladon (1802-1893), scientist and François-Alphonse Forel (1841-1912), scientist.

The museum relates this to its scientific work and an extensive collection of art and objects that have as their subject the life, history and nature of and around the lake.

Exem, the artist Emmanuel Excoffier (b. 1951), created the frescoes.

(Source and further information: museeduleman.ch).