3023 - CUNO AMIET

CUNO AMIET (Solothurn 1868–1961 Oschwand) Bretonisches Stillleben. 1893. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left: Amiet 93. 46 × 38 cm. Provenance: - Private collection, Mrs Gertrud Dübi, Solothurn (label on verso). - Private collection, Switzerland, since 1976. - Auction Christie’s Zurich, 7 June 2010, lot 81. - Private collection, Switzerland, acquired at the above auction. Exhibited: Zurich 1938, Cuno Amiet. Zeichnungen. Aquarelle. Gemälde in Öl. Pastell. Wachsfarben, Kunsthaus Zürich, 14 May–12 June 1938, no. 98. Literature: - Georg Mauner: Von Pont-Aven zur ‘Brücke’ – Amiet als ‘pons inter pontes’, in: exhibition catalogue Cuno Amiet. Von Pont-Aven zur ‘Brücke’, Bern and Geneva 1999–2001, p. 21, as ‘Stillleben’. - Georg Mauner: Cuno Amiet – die ‘Obsternten’ von 1912, Zurich 2002, no. B17 (ill.). - Franz Müller and Viola Radlach: Cuno Amiet. Die Gemälde 1883–1919, ed. Swiss Institute for Art Research, Zurich 2014, vol. I, p. 126, no. 1893.25 (ill.). This still life of 1893 belongs to a small group of works from Cuno Amiet’s years in Brittany in which he explored the incidence and effects of light. In a letter to his family in Solothurn, complaining about the ‘philistines on the jury’, Amiet describes the distinctive lighting of Breton interiors, ‘where the light enters only through the door & a small hole in the wall’ (letter from Cuno Amiet, 22 March 1893, Cuno Amiet estate). His fascination with these conditions is also apparent in the depiction of the apples on the cloth, their forms emerging from the dark background in the scant light.