ALBERT ANKER | KNABE BEI TISCH (RUEDI ANKER) II

Cécile Du Bois-Anker, Geneva

Private collection, Switzerland (1962)

Berne, Kunstmuseum, Albert Anker. Katalog der Gemälde und Ölstudien, 1962, no. 141

Sandor Kuth / Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler, Albert Anker. Werkkatalog der Gemälde und Ölstudien, 1995, Berne, p. 106, no. 137, ill.

The most celebrated Swiss genre painter of the 19^th Century, Anker began his career by copying old masters at the Louvre and painting portraits of his friends and immediate family. The present work shows the artist’s eldest son Franz Adolf Rudolf, known as Ruedi, one of the painter’s six children, who tragically died, aged only two, in 1869. Another painting of the artist’s son, a moving work showing Ruedi recumbent on his deathbed with flowers, is in a Swiss private collection. The current composition is an endearing image of childhood showing the young boy seated at table intent on his meal. Anker carefully observes the child’s concentration and left hand steadying the white porcelain bowl, which seems large in comparison to the small boy. Anker also places great importance on the still life element of the composition, rendering the different textures of porcelain, silver, linen and bread with great virtuosity. Throughout his career Anker would go on to create at least 30 still lives, such as the composition Stillleben: Tee (1877, Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Winterthur) whose effect, like the present work, is largely due to the particularly subtle combination of tonalities of white.