The adventures of a Swiss heiress with van Gogh and a Cabriolet  

Gertrud Dübi-Müller inherited a fortune that she used to buy art – and a car. An independent spirit, she travelled around Europe, climbed mountains, and became friends with Swiss artists including Ferdinand Hodler and Cuno Amiet. Her adventurous life and outstanding collection are on show at the Basel Museum of Fine Arts. 

Not many art collectors can count a painting by Vincent van Gogh among their earliest acquisitions. But the adventurous Swiss heiress, collector, photographer, mountaineer, muse and model Gertrud Dübi-Müller was just 19 when she bought the Dutch artist’s 1889 Portrait of Charles-Elézard Trabuc.  

It was the beginning of a passion that would culminate in a collection including works by Paul Cézanne, Gustav Klimt and Henri Matisse. Dübi-Müller also cultivated friendships with renowned Swiss artists such as Cuno Amiet, Giovanni Giacometti (the father of Alberto) and Ferdinand Hodler, who painted her portrait 17 times. 
  
Her life, photography and impressive collection is the subject of an exhibition, Van Gogh, Hodler and a Cabriolet: The Collector and Pioneer Gertrud Dübi-Müller, on show at the Basel Museum of Fine Arts until February 7. 

A merry orphan

Born in the Swiss town of Solothurn in 1888, Gertrud Müller was orphaned at a young age. She and her three siblings inherited a profitable factory supplying screws and rotating parts to the watch industry from their father, Josef Adolf Müller. Growing up, they were cared for by an uncle and a German governess (whom the children, it seems, did not love).  

Gertrud met Amiet and Hodler for the first time at the opening in 1902 of what was then the Solothurn Museum of Art and Science (now the Solothurn Art Museum). She shared her passion for art with her brother, Josef, and took painting lessons with Amiet.   

Amiet was to become a lifelong friend who gave her a painting every year for her birthday. He also inspired her enthusiasm for van Gogh. Gripped by van Gogh fever, Gertrud and Josef went on what they termed a “van Gogh-ing” trip to Munich and Vienna, where she bought the portrait. She also undertook research to find out more about the art she purchased, visiting the psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy in France where Trabuc had worked as an attendant and van Gogh was a patient.  

In 1911, she bought a cabriolet in Geneva and, according to local lore, became the first woman in Solothurn to drive. With friends and her siblings, she raced around Europe, visiting museums and exhibitions, hiking, skiing and buying works by Matisse, Cézanne and Edgar Degas. In Berlin, she visited the painter Max Liebermann and bought three of his works, including a view of the garden terrace at his villa by the Wannsee lake. She visited an exhibition of the Swiss painter Alice Bailly, acquired three of her works, and kept in touch with her for many years. 

Portraits at an exhibition

In a friendly rivalry, Amiet and Giacometti competed to paint the most compelling portrait of Gertrud. In 1907, they both portrayed her at the same time, wearing a huge, eye-catching violet hat that takes some panache to carry off. Amiet’s portrait entered her collection; both works are on show in Basel.

At the time, the portraits caused a sensation – and brought Hodler into the competition. His 1911 full-length portrait of Gertrud in a pink gown was the beginning of a close friendship. She captured him on camera with the portrait – one of the first of many photographs she took of Hodler that give insight into his artistic practice, life and character. 

There are many photographs of Hodler painting, including several of him working on his magnus opus, Blick ins Unendliche (View Into Infinity), for which Gertrud also served as a model. But we also see him sledding in Grindelwald, a village in canton Bern, lying on a garden bed while she plays the accordion to him, beating a drum, and walking by Lake Geneva with his wife and daughter. The last photograph of him that Gertrud took, in 1917, showed Hodler on his deathbed.  

She was not just his model – he was also hers, a balance that created equality, despite the gender difference and 35-year age gap. She reported in a letter to her brother that she had “partied the night away” with Hodler and his wife during a visit to Geneva. 

His 1916 Portrait of Gertrud Müller Among Greenery shows her standing with hands on hips in a confident pose, looking directly at the viewer. Still, Hodler’s attitude to Gertrud does seem almost paternal at times. “Better to drive more slowly all the way to Paris than to go fast and crash and burn,” he cautioned in a letter. “I won’t be around to keep reminding you to take it easy.” 

A woman ahead of her time 

It was not just as a driver that Dübi-Müller was exceptional for women of her time. She loved outdoor activities and frequently climbed mountains with groups of male friends, photographing them posing on peaks above deep ravines. The photographs do not, in general, show Gertrud, who must have been balancing equally precariously — with her camera — in order to take them.   

In 1921, she married Otto Dübi, a lawyer who was also director of her family’s company and belonged to her circle of friends. Two years earlier, he had given her a 1901-1902 Klimt painting, Goldfish (To My Critics). It portrays a goldfish and several nude female figures, one of whom is turning her bare bottom to the viewer. Painted just after Klimt’s works for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna had sparked a scandal, its message is clear. Gertrud hung it in her bedroom.  

She remained committed to contemporary art throughout her long life, serving on the city of Solothurn’s Art Commission from 1932 to 1942. Her adventures also continued – in 1937, she climbed the Matterhorn. 

Gertrud and her husband set up the Dübi-Müller Foundation in 1964. It is thanks to her that the museum underwent an institutional change to focus on art in 1981, a year after her death at the age of 91. The 190 works controlled by her foundation were added to the museum’s collection and are still its most significant acquisition to date.  

Dübi-Müller’s photographs, which are held by Fotostiftung Schweiz, the national photography archive in Winterthur, have only recently been fully catalogued, according to Géraldine Meyer, the curator of the exhibition. Some are on display in Basel for the first time. They document a life of adventure, travel, friendship and art – a life full, above all, of enjoyment and fun.

Edited by Virginie Mangin/gw