Paul Gauguin, Paysage au toit rouge (Landscape with Red Roof). Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 66 cm. Rudolf Staechelin Collection. Photo: Robert Bayer.

BASEL.- After four years, Rudolf Staechelin’s (1881–1946) renowned collection of paintings is returning to Basel. To celebrate the return of the Staechelin paintings to Basel and make them accessible to all, the Fondation Beyeler is offering free admission to the museum all weekend (31.8.–1.9.19). 

Following much-acclaimed exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D. C., both together with the Im Obersteg Collection, 19 impressionist, post-impressionist and classical modern works will be presented at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel from 31 August 2019. These remarkable paintings by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Ferdinand Hodler, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir will be on focussed display until 29 October 2019. They will then be integrated in the Fondation Beyeler’s regularly evolving collection displays. The works’ return to public display in Basel marks a new chapter in the Rudolf Staechelin Collection’s eventful history. 

The Rudolf Staechelin Family Trust (New York) has entered a long-term loan agreement with the Fondation Beyeler for a period of ten years. During this time, none of the works may be sold. The loan’s associated costs, such as insurance, framing and restoration expenses, will be covered by the Rudolf Staechelin Family Trust. The Fondation Beyeler will regularly exhibit the works entrusted to its care and will in turn loan them to other Swiss and international museums. The Beyeler Collection is greatly enhanced by this renewed public and research access to art historically significant works, as the Staechelin paintings complement existing Beyeler holdings and introduce new points of emphasis. 

Paintings such as Arlequin au loup (1918) by Pablo Picasso, the still life Verre et pommes (1882) by Paul Cézanne and the landscape Temps calme, Fécamp (1881) by Claude Monet reinforce the core of the Beyeler Collection. This also holds true of other works by Cézanne, Degas, Monet and van Gogh, whose Le jardin de Daubigny (1890) offers a counterpart to the Beyeler Collection’s Champ aux meules de blé (1890). Both paintings were executed in Auvers-sur-Oise and belong to a group of 13 wide-format works, featuring the double-square format favoured by the painter in the last months of his life from mid-June 1890 onward. Examinations of the canvas structure carried out by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam have revealed that the artist cut all double-square canvases from the same roll of fabric. The canvases for the Rudolf Staechelin Collection’s Le jardin de Daubigny and the Beyeler Collection’s Champ aux meules de blé are thus once more reunited in this exhibition. 

Pablo Picasso, Arlequin au loup (Harlequin with Black Mask), 1918. Oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm, Rudolf Staechelin Collection. © Succession Picasso / 2019, ProLitteris, Zürich. Photo: Robert Bayer

Vincent Van Gogh, Le jardin de Daubigny (Daubigny’s Garden), 1890. Oil on canvas, 56 x 101.5 cm,  Rudolf Staechelin Collection. Photo: Robert Bayer.

Closely tied to the development of modern art, exhibited in the past at the Fondation Beyeler, yet not represented in its holdings, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro are now enriching the Beyeler Collection with Tête de femme (1870) by Manet, Gabrielle (1910) by Renoir, and the landscape paintings Paysage au toit rouge (1885) by Gauguin as well as La Carrière, Pontoise (around 1874) and Le Sentier du village (1875) by Cézanne’s friend Pissarro. Late paintings by Ferdinand Hodler, to whom the Fondation Beyeler devoted an exhibition in 2013, form a highlight of the Rudolf Staechelin Collection. Among them are La malade (1914 and 1914/15), poignant portraits of his lover Valentine Godé-Darel, La morte (1915), a work held in high regard by Hodler connoisseurs, as well as three magnificent landscapes, Paysage de Montana (1915), Le Grammont après la pluie (1917) and Le Mont-Blanc aux nuages roses (1918). 

Édouard Manet,  Tête de femme (Head of a Woman), 1870. Oil on canvas, 56.5 x 46.5 cm, Rudolf Staechelin Collection. Photo: Robert Bayer.

Ferdinand Hodler, La morte (The Dead Valentine Godé-Darel), 1915. Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm, Rudolf Staechelin Collection. Photo: Robert Bayer.

Ferdinand Hodler, Le Grammont après la pluie (The Grammont after the Rain), 1917. Oil on canvas, 60.5 x 80 cm, Rudolf Staechelin Collection. Photo: Robert Bayer.

Ferdinand Hodler, Le Mont-Blanc aux nuages roses (Mont-Blanc with pink Clouds), 1918. Oil on canvas, 60 x 85 cm, Rudolf Staechelin Collection. Photo: Robert Bayer

Until 29 October 2019, all paintings on loan from the Rudolf Staechelin Collection will be presented in a specific two-room exhibition, accompanied by selected related works from the Beyeler Collection. They will then be exhibited in the next Beyeler Collection exhibition in a wider art historical context (from 2 November 2019 to 5 January 2020). The public is invited to (re)discover the Rudolf Staechelin Collection in its new home