In addition to being one of the most renowned Genevan miniaturists of his time, Pierre-Louis Bouvier (1765–1836) was a gifted portraitist. His portraits—miniatures painted in watercolor and gouache on ivory, oil paintings, and prints—were created in the tense atmosphere of the revolutionary events of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Having outgrown the rich tradition of enamel painting of his hometown, he turned to Paris, the cultural center of Europe. There, he was shaped by the academic portrait convention and elegant staging, in which grace and delicateness dominate. France’s violent annexation of Geneva and the resulting political and economic deterioration caused many locals to flee. Bouvier settled in Hamburg in 1797, where he was forced to adapt to a bourgeois clientele and the reality of having to express the given and the visible in a dignified manner in his portraits. His natural portraits follow concepts of design that are more modest and employ poses that are more neutral, resulting in focused, realistic character studies.

This exhibition brings together examples from all creative periods of his oeuvre, illuminating Bouvier’s virtuosic handling of different portrait concepts and his ability to conform to the wishes of his customers in the context of the social changes of the age. The collection’s holdings of miniatures by this artist will be augmented through large- and small-format loans from museums and private Swiss collections. The exhibition will embed Bouvier’s oeuvre in the museum’s large-format collection of oil paintings of his contemporaries François Ferrière, Firmin Massot, Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer, and Jacques-Laurent Agasse. This contextualization will enable visitors to make direct comparisons and discern similarities and differences in the visual language of these works.

Curated by Sonja Remensberger