Fondation Gottfried Keller

 

In 1890, Lydia Welti-Escher (1858-1891) made a substantial donation to the Swiss Confederation to establish a foundation in honour of the writer and painter Gottfried Keller (1819-1890), an intimate of the Escher family. The mission of the Fondation Gottfried Keller is to build up a collection of works of art, mainly Swiss, in order to stop the potential exodus of this heritage from the country and to make it available to the public. The pieces that make up the collection are distributed among the main Swiss museums in the framework of long-term deposits. Under the responsibility of the Federal Council, the collection has been substantially enriched over the years and now comprises over 8,000 works.

 

Since 1898, the Fondation Gottfried Keller has deposited works at the Musée Jenisch Vevey, which have joined the collections at irregular intervals. The collection, which includes about ten paintings and a few drawings, includes important works by René Auberjonois, Alexandre Calame, Wilhelm Gimmi, Ferdinand Hodler, Louis Moilliet, Alfred van Muyden and Léopold Robert. It also brings together a group of prints including fifteen engravings by Picasso.