The Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne (Canton of Vaud) hosts an exceptional exhibition in partnership with the Museum Langmatt in Baden (canton of Aargau). The magnificent collection of primarily Impressionist works, acquired between 1908 and 1919 by the collector couple Jenny and Sidney Brown, is coming to the Hermitage for its first public display outside its home at Villa Langmatt.
Forty years after the Fondation’s inaugural exhibition of works from French-speaking Switzerland, L’impressionnisme dans les collections romandes, the Fondation presents the most prestigious collections of Impressionism from the German-speaking cantons.
Villa Langmatt
This major event will also celebrate the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, which crystallized in 1874 with the first collective exhibition by a group of young independent artists.
Jenny Sulzer (1871-1968) and Sidney Brown (1865-1941) were each born into important entrepreneurial families based in Winterthur and married in 1896. While on their honeymoon in Paris, they bought their first painting, a landscape by Eugène Boudin. This acquisition established their interest in French painting, notably its use of colour and effects of light.
Villa Langmatt
Around the turn of the 20th century, the Browns frequently travelled to explore the art of their time and support artists. The collection is dominated by landscapes and still lifes, including works by Pierre Bonnard, Eugène Boudin, Mary Cassatt, Camille Corot, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Henri Fantin-Latour, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, making it one of Switzerland’s finest and most significant Impressionist collections.
These masterpieces are now held at the Villa Langmatt, an Art Nouveau residence influenced by English rural architecture. Built for the Browns by architect Karl Moser between 1899 and 1901, the house is closed for extensive restoration.
The exhibition at the Fondation de l’Hermitage will feature over 60 of the most remarkable works from the Langmatt collection. The exhibition will then travel to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, followed by the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna.