Roger Mühl

Sotheby’s is proud to be able to offer the following works (lots 25-40) from a Swiss Private collection which was built up over decades with love and dedication by a couple of collectors who instigated close and lasting relationships with the artists they followed. The collection, which includes works by key Swiss and international artists from the second half of the 20^th Century, reflects the couple’s taste, their enthusiasm and passion, which they passed on to the following family generation who remain committed art collectors.

The collection illustrates the collectors’ avant-garde vision and awareness of contemporary artistic experimentation, particularly in the field of kinetic art. The translation of movement into sculpture and into other three-dimensional works is the common factor which links the different works in the collection, even up to the more recent acquisitions, such as Sylvie Fleury’s neon work Pleasures, where light becomes an inherent part of the artwork. 

The collection also demonstrates the influence which artists such as Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Max Bill and Juan Mirò had on each other. Important works by Tinguely are included in the sale together with an important Miro sculpture L’Equilibriste and rare works by Niki de Saint-Phalle. There is an interesting dialogue between these works which are all appearing for the first time at auction.

The close relationship with artists enjoyed by the collectors is illustrated by an anecdote concerning lot 40 in the sale, the granite sculpture by Max Bill, Kugelschale mit drei Gleichen Ausschnitten. In 1992, the couple invited the artist to see the work in situ in their house after having purchased it from a Zurich gallery. Max Bill replied: “I accept with great pleasure your invitation to a brunch on 13^th September to celebrate the inauguration of the sculpture”. The handwritten note and photograph shown below are testimony of this privileged relationship. 

This early work shows Hodler’s only son Hector in profile, seated at a table, as he concentrates on spooning his breakfast from the white porcelain bowl before him. The work is closely related to and probably preparatory for another more highly finished composition from the same year, Mutter und Kind (private collection, SIK-ISEA no. 1198), which shows Hector, wearing the same red dress, seated on his mother, Augustine Dupin’s lap, as she feeds him. A further related painting, depicting Augustine and Hector, Mutter mit Kind in der Küche in the Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, shows mother and child seated before a fireplace (SIK-ISEA no. 1197).

The current work is an intimate insight into Hodler’s private life. The artist had met Augustine Dupin (1852-1909) around 1884. She became both his companion and model, however they never married and Hodler only officially recognized their son in 1907. According to Loosli, the setting of this work and the other two related compositions is probably the Geneva apartment which Augustine shared with her mother. Hector Hodler (1887-1920) was born on 1st October1888 and later served as a model for his father in several of his most celebrated compositions: from when he was a child in Bezauberter Knabe (1893, Kunsthaus, Zurich) until when he was a young man, such as in Blick ins Unendliche (1903-1904, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne).

The composition is vigorously painted and clearly visible pentimenti (in the lower part of the red dress and child’s feet) show the artist in the process of finding the right position. Hodler’s characteristic nervous outlines and virtuoso handling of reflected light (on the rim of the white porcelain bowl and the golden hair at the back of the child’s head) make this a very attractive example of Hodler’s early painting style.