Johann Melchior Wyrsch (1732-1798) was one of Switzerland’s most important representatives of 18th-century portrait painting. Bourgeois and aristocratic ladies and gentlemen from central Switzerland, Solothurn, Besançon and the Franche-Comté ordered portraits from him.
Born in Buochs in 1732, he received his training in Lucerne and Einsiedeln. In 1753 and 1754, he worked in Rome and Naples. After returning to Nidwalden, he married Maria Barbara Keyser (1740-1803) in 1761.
Buochs, Johann Melchior Wyrsch
The couple settled in Besançon in 1768, and Wyrsch founded an academy of painting and sculpture. After successful years as a portrait painter and director of the academy, he returned to Switzerland and became director of the municipal drawing school in Lucerne in 1784. In 1798, he was shot during the French invasion, although he was a mediator (or just because of that).
The exhibition ‘Johann Melchior Wyrsch. Frauenbildnisse’ (Johann Melchior Wyrsch. Portraits of women) at the Winkelriedhaus Museum in Nidwalden shows his portraits of women from the museum’s collection ann private collections.