Gertrud Dübi-Müller

Gertrud Müller (later: Dübi-Müller) at the wheel of her Pic-Pic , 1911

Gertrud Dübi-Müller (born Anna Gertrud Müller on April 29, 1888 in Solothurn ; died there on January 20, 1980 ; entitled to live in Aetingen ) was a Swiss photographer , art collector and patron . She is known for her documentary photos of Swiss artists at the beginning of the 20th century. She bequeathed her extensive art collection with important works of modern art to the Solothurn Art Museum .

Life

Youth and education

Gertrud Müller was born in Solothurn in 1888 as the youngest child of Josef Adolf Müller and his wife Anna Müller-Haiber. The mother died shortly after she was born, her father died in 1894 when she was six years old. He had the screw and turned parts factory Müller & Cie. (later Sphinxwerke Müller & Cie. ), which contributed significantly to the family's prosperity. Even before Gertrud Müller was born, two of her brothers died in childhood. The siblings Emma Anna Margaritha Müller, Margaritha Anna Müller and Josef Oscar Müller reached adulthood . After the death of their parents, the underage children were raised by a German educator. Gertrud Müller first attended primary and secondary school in Solothurn and then moved to Tannegg boarding school for two years . In 1905 and 1906 language stays in Geneva and London followed. She was a sporty woman all her life, riding horses, skiing, climbing mountains and skating. As a self-confident woman, she bought a Pic-Pic car in Geneva in 1911 and drove it herself. In her hometown of Solothurn, she was the first woman to drive a car.

First artist contacts, start of collecting

Ferdinand Hodler: Portrait of Gertrud Müller, full figure , 1911

Gertrud Müller and her adult siblings were interested in art and each set up their own collection. The model for the collectors was the Solothurn entrepreneur Oscar Miller , who was one of the first to collect modern works of art in Switzerland and was one of the co-founders of the Museum of Art and Science , from which today's Art Museum Solothurn emerged . The only 14-year-old Gertrud Müller took part in the opening of the museum in 1902 and on this occasion got to know the painters Cuno Amiet and Ferdinand Hodler personally. She visited a native of Solothurn Amiet in 1904 at his home in Oschwand and received painting lessons from him.

Gertrud Müller began taking photos around 1906. Together with her brother Josef, she visited the painter Giovanni Giacometti in Stampa in 1907 and took portraits of him and his family. On this occasion she acquired two watercolors by the painter. Through Cuno Amiet, Gertrud Müller learned to appreciate the work of the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, to whom an exhibition in Zurich was dedicated in 1907. Together with her brother Josef, she traveled to Munich in 1908, where she attended a Van Gogh exhibition in the Thannhauser gallery . They then drove on to Vienna, where Gertrud Müller acquired Van Gogh's painting Der Irrenwärter von Saint-Rémy through the intermediary of Carl Moll in the Miethke Gallery . It was her first major art purchase. This made her one of the earliest collectors of van Gogh's works in the German-speaking world. She later traveled to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and spoke to the staff of the institution, as she was interested in van Gogh's stay there and wanted to learn more about the person portrayed by Charles Elzéard Trabuc (1830-1896).

In 1908 three paintings by Albert Trachsel and the plaster relief Seated Female Nude by Aristide Maillol , which she acquired during a visit to the artist, were also purchased. In the same year Cuno Amiet painted Gertrud Müller's portrait The Violet Hat and gave it to her. With her sister Margaritha (also Margrit / Marguerite) Kottmann-Müller she visited Ferdinand Hodler in his studio in Geneva in 1909. She bought the painting Seated Young Woman in the Garden directly from the artist , her first Hodler painting, which was to be followed by others. On another visit to Geneva in 1911, Hodler painted the full-length portrait of Gertrud Müller in a pink dress . In the period that followed, Hodler created 16 more portraits of Gertrud Müller. Both were close friends, which lasted until Hodler's death in 1918. Through Hodler, she met other Swiss artists such as Hans Berger , Rodo von Niederhäusern and Albert Trachsel. Together with the painters Amiet, Hodler and Giovanni Giacometti, she traveled to Rome in 1911 and attended the art exhibition Esposizione internazionale in the Palazzo delle Belle Arti . There was also a friendly relationship with the painter Ernst Morgenthaler .

The collection grows

Although works by Swiss artists dominated Gertrud Müller's collection, there were always individual purchases of works by foreign - especially French - artists. Sun acquired the collector in 1912 by the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard the painting Three skulls on a Persian rug of Paul Cézanne . In 1913 she traveled to Berlin, where the sculptor Fritz Klimsch created a full-length portrait of Gertrud Müller. During this trip she also met the Berlin painter Max Liebermann , from whom she acquired the paintings Self-Portrait with Easel , Hunters with Pack and Garden Terrace in Wannsee three years later . From 1915 on, her friends included Carl Spitteler , who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature , whom she also photographed and with whom she traveled together. In 1918 Gertrud Müller visited Ferdinand Hodler, who was already seriously ill. On May 18, she took him on an excursion to Cologny on Lake Geneva . Hodler died a day later and she photographed him on his death bed.

At the age of 33, Gertrud Müller married the Solothurn lawyer Otto Dübi, who was the director of the family-owned Sphinxwerke Müller & Cie. directed. From then on it carried the alliance name Dübi-Müller. Her husband supported her collecting activities and gave her the painting Goldfish (to my critics) by Gustav Klimt - presumably at the time of her engagement . Her brother Josef Müller was an important advisor in building up the art collection. He had given up his work in the family business to devote himself entirely to art. He not only worked as a collector, but also worked as a painter and lived as an artist in Paris from 1922 to 1942. She had already visited the French capital with him before the First World War and met the poet Rainer Maria Rilke on the occasion . In 1919 Josef Müller recommended his sister Gertrud to purchase the picture Odalisque by Henri Matisse . In the same year she bought in addition to the art gallery Bernheim-Jeune by Edgar Degas pastel When leaving the bath . Gertrud Dübi-Müller kept in close correspondence with her brother during his Paris years. The purchase of three paintings that Gertrud Dübi-Müller acquired in the mid-1920s may also have been under his influence. In addition to La table et le fauteuil by Juan Gris , these included other still lifes by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso .

Gertrud Dübi-Müller repeatedly lent pictures for exhibitions. At the request of Cuno Amiet, she sent three of his paintings ( Apple-Picking Woman , Mineli and Landscape with Dog ) to an exhibition in Munich in 1931. These pictures were destroyed in the fire in the Munich Glass Palace . A year later Gertrud Dübi-Müller became a member of the Solothurn Art Commission, in which she campaigned for the purchase of modern art for the city's art museum. She held this office until 1942, when her brother, who had returned to Switzerland, took on this role. The last significant purchases for her collection in 1939 included three paintings by Cuno Amiet, including the picture Chrysanthemums , which had previously been in the Jenaer Kunstverein and came into her possession through the Lucerne Galerie Fischer . Her collection found a new home in 1941 in the new villa designed by William Dunkel in Solothurn's Fegetzallee.

The Dübi-Müller Foundation

Gertrud Dübi-Müller and her husband Otto had no children. In 1964, both decided that their art possessions should be preserved for the public and set up the Dübi-Müller Foundation for this purpose. Otto Dübi died in 1966. Gertrud Dübi-Müller lived surrounded by the art collection in her house until her death in 1980. The 190 works collection of the Dübi-Müller Foundation was then transferred to the Solothurn Art Museum. The focus on contemporary representational art is characteristic of the collection. In addition to individual works by Degas, Cézanne, Gris, Braque, Picasso and Klimt, the foundation also includes other pictures by foreign artists such as Notre Dame de Paris by Matisse and Christ among the soldiers as well as two portraits of women by Georges Rouault . The majority of the collection consists of works by Swiss artists. 33 works alone are by Hans Berger , there are also larger groups of works by Ernst Morgenthaler and Ferdinand Hodler. The group of works by Cuno Amiet include his major picture The yellow hills and several portraits of Gertrud Mueller, including a portrait as a rider . Other Swiss artists represented in the collection are René Auberjonois and Maurice Barraud . In addition, there are paintings by Félix Vallotton : Interior: dining room table with a bouquet of flowers , Flood at Houlgate and red pepper fruits on a round, white-lacquered table, and Rodo 's sculpture The Dance . The photographic estate of Gertrud Dübi-Müller is kept in the Swiss Photo Foundation in Winterthur . In 1969, Josef Müller followed the example of his sister Gertrud and transferred 55 works from his collection to the Josef Müller Foundation. After his death in 1977 these works also came to the Solothurn Art Museum.

• 

  Edgar Degas: When leaving the bathroom

• 

  Vincent van Gogh: Madman of Saint-Rémy

• 

  Paul Cézanne: Three skulls on an oriental carpet

• 

  Gustav Klimt: Goldfish (to my critics)

• 

  Albert Trachsel: L'Île des arbres en fleurs

• 

  Félix Vallotton: Interior: dining room table with a bouquet of flowers

literature

• Monique Barbier-Mueller, Caesar Menz: Gertrud Dübi-Müller: collector, photographer, patron . Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2016, ISBN 3-03810-139-7 .
• Walter Binder, André Kamber, Swiss Foundation for Photography, Art Museum Solothurn (ed.): Gertrud Dübi-Müller, documentary photography . Vogt-Schild, Solothurn 1984, ISBN 3-85962-071-1 .
• Hansjakob Diggelmann: Dübi Müller Foundation, Josef Müller Foundation . Solothurn Art Museum, Solothurn 1981.

Web links

• André Kamber: Dübi [-Müller], Gertrud. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Information on the Dübi-Müller Foundation on the website of the Solothurn Art Museum .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The two brothers were Oskar Josef Müller (1878–1881) and Josef Robert Müller (1882–1886). For the family tree, see Monique Barbier-Mueller, Cäsar Menz: Gertrud Dübi-Müller: Collector, Photographer, Patron , p. 171.
2. ↑ Monique Barbier-Mueller, Caesar Menz: Gertrud Dübi-Müller: collector, photographer, patron , p. 126.
3. ↑ The purchase of the Van Gogh painting is erroneously dated back to 1907 (for example in the Historical Lexicon of Switzerland). For purchase see Monique Barbier-Mueller, Cäsar Menz: Gertrud Dübi-Müller: collector, photographer, patron , pp. 74–75, 118–119, 170.
4. ↑ Monique Barbier-Mueller, Caesar Menz: Gertrud Dübi-Müller: collector, photographer, patron , pp. 74–75.