Two paintings at the Oskar Reinhart Foundation

This post was recycled from an item first published back in September 2006, but I wanted to mention Am Romerholz on this blog so I took the easy route, with some editing to make me feel I had put in a bit of effort.

Switzerland is fortunate to have many small galleries and private collections open to the public. These are the perfect antidote to the "Big Shows". One of the best is the Oskar Reinhart foundation at "Am Romerholz" near Winterthur. Small, quiet, intimate, with a world class collection. It has just closed for a period of refurbishment unfortunately, but visit it on a quiet day and you would have the place to yourself. I went back recently to look at a couple of pictures from the collection. I'd seen some reproductions and wanted to reassure myself that the originals were as good as I remembered. (The reproductions here are not particularly good quality)

Renoir's "Young women talking" is one of his early style, "peaches and cream" paintings. It is possible to tire of them because of endless familiarity - chocolate boxes, posters, calendars etc. However they still impress me, especially when seen in the flesh. I like this particularly painting because it has a certain photographic quality. It captures an instant, ( decisive moment), as two young women exchange some talk, or a secret or a joke or whatever. Like photographs of this genre, although it freezes an instant, it also evokes the situation and atmosphere surrounding what is going on so that our imagination is able to expand the experience. We feel we are party to it - almost as if we were there. The painting is also physically very beautiful. It hums gently with the light and smells and sounds of a summer garden. No reproduction could come close.

The second painting is one of Goya's very few still-lifes. It simply shows three salmon steaks dumped on a slab, stark against a shadowy background. This however is a powerful image, especially contrasted with other examples of the genre. It was painted between 1808 and 1812 when Goya was much affected and involved in the events of the Peninsular war.

This resulted in paintings such as "The Third of May" and later the dark and disturbing "Disasters of War" series of aquatints. This still life anticipates these, and is perhaps even more powerful because of its allegorical nature. We can imagine these pieces of salmon as the hacked limbs of victims piled in the gloom on some battlefield or other. Human beings as butchered meat. There is no attempt to prettify the scene with domestic accessories such as you find in similar paintings, and I think Goya's intention is clear. When you come across this painting in the exhibition it has quite an impact.

If you live in Switzerland, and are interested in art, the Swiss Museum pass is a good idea. Free entrance to virtually all museums and galleries in the country. See http://www.museumspass.ch/.