95: Adolf Christian Franz Müller, known as Franz Müller (1841-1903)

Château de Châtelard above the village of Tavel with Montreux and Lake Geneva beyond 

Oil on canvas

Signed and dated ‘F. Müller 78’ lower left

72 cm x 128 cm.

This outstanding Swiss landscape is almost certainly viewed from the Chemin du Crépon looking south east toward Château de Châtelard above the village of Tavel to the south and beyond it the Golfe de Territet and Lake Geneva. With its rocks and stones in the immediate foreground, that most probably came from the nearby Roman villa at Baugy, this large panorama was painted in 1878 by the accomplished landscape and figurative painter Adolf Christian Franz Müller (1841-1903). Better known simply as Franz Müller, he usually signed his work Franz or as here F. Müller. Müller was the son of Maria Johanna née Schwagler and Johann Michael Müller. He was born on 21^st July 1841 in the Swiss village of Boltigen, in the canton of Berne, where he and his three elder siblings Johann Jakob (b. 1837), Friedrich Jakob (b. 1838) and Johanna Maria Elizabeth (b. 1840) were all baptised and grew up surrounded by upland pastures backed by majestic mountains. Those beautiful early surroundings were to inspire the setting for so many of his later landscapes. 

Despite being an artist of considerable talent, very little is known of Müller’s training or of his early career. However, it is believed that for a period he worked in Dusseldorf and from there returned to the country of his birth, where he spent the majority of his working life, painting naturalistic oils and the occasional watercolours of the Swiss countryside, its local inhabitants and especially views in and around Montreux. It was there that on 25^th October 1879 that the thirty eight year old Müller married a young widow named Elisa Louisa Bockhacker née Butts, who had been born on the English island of Guernsey in January 1851. Prior to her second marriage Elisa had been living at Vernex where she taught English to the local inhabitants. By June 1880 the newlyweds were living in the village of Planches but in September that year they moved to Berne. After that they settled for a while at Soleure but then in 1882 they moved once more to the medieval town of Basel on the Rhine River in northwest Switzerland, close to the country’s borders with France and Germany. 1883 saw the birth of Franz and Elisa’s first child followed two years later by their second but because of the peripatetic nature of his artistic career, Müller was not there for either births. In 1886 he showed six of his oils at Aarau in a large exhibition of Swiss art. He was subsequently recorded as living and working in Zurich where he executed a number of paintings for the city’s hotels, taverns, a local dentist and private clientele. By 1899 he was based at Vevey and then in 1900 was travelling abroad though it is not known where he was residing when he died at the age of sixty one on 29^thFebruary 1903. 

Among his many commissions, Müller executed six remarkable oils to decorate the walls of the Café du Jura, a bistro on the corner of Avenue Nestlé and the ruelle du Vuagnard au Trait in Montreux. Built in 1892 and now used as a hairdresser’s salon, the bistro walls were lined with Müller’s six oils depicting local characters and views of the surrounding Montreusienne landscape, counting among them another fine view of the Château de Châtelard and one of Montreux itself dated from 1896. Others showed the cave at Château de Pallens owned by the Lilla family while another included the villa Hauterive where the Anglo-Jamaican artist Théodore Renkewitz (1833-1913) lived. In addition to pure landscapes were well crafted figure groups that included a young girl and boy in the countryside as well as a party of local men merry making in the streets. Today Müller’s six paintings are owned by the Municipalité de Montreux and hang in the Salle de Marriages in Montreux’s hôtel de ville. Because of this the Municipalité de Montreux decided to stage a retrospective exhibition of Franz Müller’s work at Montreux in 1993, of which this present work was to hang alongside those six oils and several other of the artist’s works. Prior to the exhibition, curated by the historian Evelyne Lüthi-Graf, articles appeared in the local papers, noting that at least twenty of Müller’s works, dating from 1878 and 1893 had been located and that the organisers were keen to discover other works and perhaps more importantly, further information about the artist and the identity of the local models who posed for his paintings. Sadly the exhibition never took place. 

This large and accomplished oil, dated 1878, is Müller’s first or one of his first views of Château de Châtelard and Montreux. Today the vista has greatly changed. Gone is much of the woodland, open pasture and country tracks which have been replaced by buildings and roads. However, development was already beginning when Müller executed this view. By 1878 the village of Tavel, shown in the central valley and other hamlets surrounding Montreux were becoming increasingly more populated and likewise Montreux itself was becoming more popular among tourists due to the ease of transport across the water but more especially because of the increasing railway network. To cater for the influx of visitors during the nineteenth century, a number of hotels were built in Montreux and elsewhere along the shores of Lake Geneva. Among them was Montreux’s Alpes Hotel where the Empress Elizabeth (known as Sissi) of Austria occupied the first floor as well as the Hotel Byron at Villeneuve, named after the famous English poet Lord Byron who visited the area and where Victor Hugo and Garibaldi were also among its guests. 

Despite new developments, Müller’s landscape focuses upon the serene majesty of nature with its dramatic mountainous terrain. Nature’s monumentality is emphasised by the two local figures in the foreground who, though close to the viewer, are still dwarfed by their surroundings. The pair stop and chat with one another as they go about their daily business; they not only add narrative interest but also lead the eye into the main composition via a carefully arranged zigzag line of tracks and clearings in the woodland and further beyond to the expanse of water across the eastern end of Lake Geneva. The impression is one of awe for the beauty of the panorama. Central to the composition and crowning a hill is the imposing edifice of Château de Châtelard, built in the mid fifteenth century by Jean de Gingin. Although one cannot see the surrounding terraced vineyard, laid out directly below the castle, Müller includes a smaller vineyard in the immediate right hand corner of his landscape and beside it stones from the ancient Roman villa at Baugy.

Müller’s repertoire included a number of other views around Lake Geneva, notably at least two of the famous Château de Chillon on the water’s edge which was painted by countless artists and was the subject of Lord Byron’s poem ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’. Müller depicted the medieval castle on at least two occasions, one being a watercolour (undated) with swans and boats on the water backed by the snow-capped Alps; the other was an oil from 1880 showing it by moonlight, described in steely greys and blues. His earlier oils are painted in a more classical manner such as ‘Idyllische Landschaft mit Blick auf Chur’ of 1873 showing a hill top town backed by mountains with a strategically placed tree in the foreground and horse drawn coach and figures along a country track. The following year he depicted a superb snow covered winter landscape with wood cutters which, like a number of his oils, is a portrait-orientated canvas. This vertical alignment was used to good effect in other later works, especially in his mountainous scenes, which adds to the drama and emphasises the steep Alpine passes. For instance, his ‘Habitants du Valais en route pour la foire de Sion’ of 1898 is viewed from a low vantage point and looks up toward the rural travellers, the steep steps to the right and upward to the town and mountains beyond. Again he uses a vertically orientated canvas for a scene of ‘Braconniers dans les Alps’ (undated) which almost makes the viewer dizzy when looking upward to the poachers scaling the rocky mountain pass while above the peaks are shrouded in mist. Unlike the latter but as here Müller’s majestic view of ‘La plaine de Villeneuve’ (undated; 91 x 80.5 cm) is viewed from a high vantage point, looking across roof tops and woodland and downward to Villeneuve on the shores of Lake Geneva. Certainly Lake Geneva, nestled within the Alps, was dear to his heart - as was Montreux, crowned by Château de Châtelard, all of which Müller perfectly encapsulates in this powerful and very beautiful panorama.