The Cabinet d’arts graphiques of the Museum of Art and History is exhibiting some 130 paintings, oil studies, watercolours, drawings and lithographs by painter and teacher Barthélemy Menn (1815-1893). This selection, drawn from some 3000 examples of his work in the holdings of the MAH, is complemented by important pieces by the artist from private and public collections, including those of the Aargauer Kunsthaus and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

The exhibition is structured around the landscape and the gure, their representation and their reciprocal relationship, while the central focus is Menn’s artistic research. A student of Lugardon and Ingres, he studied existing models, the gure and nature. Menn rst tried to deepen his understanding and then to capture the form systematically, and to organise and give rhythm to the pictorial surface. As a passionate teacher, he managed to impart to Ferdinand Hodler and many others the fundamentals of imagination and composition.