Museum Langmatt Stiftung Sidney Und Jenny Brown
The Museum Langmatt in Baden is unique in the Swiss museum scene. This Art Nouveau villa belonging to the industrialist couple Sidney and Jenny Brown-Sulzer is home to a select art collection featuring French Impressionists. It was assembled in the early 20th century, with a great deal of personal passion
The “Munich” collection
The first art movement significantly collected by the Browns was the Munich Secession; they collected artworks by Franz von Stuck, Leo Putz, and Julius Exter. To house these large-format pictures, the couple had a gallery hall built in the villa by Karl Moser in 1906. However, the owners disposed of most of their Munich Secession pictures before the First World War, to pursue their new passion for the French Impressionists.
An early Impressionist art collection in Switzerland
From 1908 onwards, the Browns took advice from the Winterthur painter and art agent Carl Montag (1880–1956), gradually acquiring paintings by Gauguin, Renoir, Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Cassat, and Cézanne from Paris galleries and collections. This gave rise to one of Switzerland’s first and most significant collections of Impressionist art.
A late interest in the 18th century
Circa 1920, the Browns developed a marked interest in the France of the 18th century. They went to great lengths to acquire a picture by Fragonard (Young Girl with Cat). In parallel, they collected exquisite French furniture from the 18th and 19th cen-turies and a series of Venetian veduta pictures (18th century). In the early 1930s, they returned to early Modernist artists, pur-chasing a number of artworks by Boudin, Corot and Cézanne.
Valuable art and craft work
Aside from the paintings and a small number of sculptures, the Browns also collected furniture from different epochs and antique silver and porcelain. They accumulated a remarkable collection of Chinese ceramics ranging from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. These objects are in themselves an important part of the many layered and multifaceted Brown collection, which can still be seen in the Museum Langmatt to this day.