Ernest Biéler

Works by Biéler of such exceptional quality, colour vibrancy and provenance rarely appear on the market. Les fardeaux has been preserved for more than 60 years by one family and is considered to be one of the artist’s finest masterpieces.  

Ernst Biéler was active between 1905 and 1938 in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland. During this period the artist abandoned traditional oil painting in favour of tempera and watercolour. The extraordinary almost full-length portrait depicting three young girls from the Village of Savièse within the Valaisanne landscape is a seminal work by the artist. As in other portraits of this period, Biéler depicts the tradition of Valais through dedicated attention to traditional costumes and rural scenes that describe everyday life within the mountain landscapes.

Although the painting is composed in a graphic manner, with strong focus on contours, the facial features of the girls are slightly uniform in order to focus the viewer’s attention on the composition and the village in the background. Biéler strived to highlight the rural motif, the authenticity, the permanence of traditions and culture of the land rather than individuals. Consequently, Biéler offers us an idealized, strong and aestheticised vision of rural life from the first half of the twentieth century, rather than portraying the harshness of peasant life.