Pierre-Louis Bouvier

Pierre-Louis Bouvier (1765-1836) was one of the most renowned Geneva miniaturists of his time and also a gifted portraitist. His portraits - miniatures in watercolor and gouache on ivory, oil paintings and prints - were created in the context of the revolutionary events of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Having outgrown the traditional enamel painting of his home town, he turned to Paris, the cultural center of Europe. Here he was influenced by an academic portrait convention, an elegant staging in which grace and delicacy dominate. France's violent annexation of Geneva and the resulting rapidly deteriorating political and economic situation caused many citizens to flee. Bouvier fled to Hamburg in 1797, where he had to adapt to a bourgeois clientele and express reality, the given and the visible, with dignity in his portraits. His natural portraits pursued simpler design concepts and more neutral poses, resulting in focused, realistic character studies within his oeuvre.

The exhibition brings together exhibits from all creative phases. The aim is to illustrate Bouvier's virtuoso handling of different portrait concepts and his ability to adapt to the wishes of his customers in the context of the social changes of the time. The artist's collection of miniatures will be supplemented by large and small-format loans from museums and Swiss private collections. Bouvier's work will be embedded in the local large-format holdings of oil paintings by his contemporaries François Ferrière, Firmin Massot, Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer and Jacques-Laurent Agasse. This contextualization makes it possible to make a direct comparison and to identify similarities and differences in the pictorial language.

Curated by Sonja Remensberger


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