Walter Enholtz

Walter Enholtz was a Swiss painter whose output consists principally of watercolours—landscapes, still lifes and portraits.

His training began around 1890 at the Gewerbeschule in Basel, where he learned watercolour painting, continued at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, and included an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in Frankfurt am Main. Generous support in the form of a scholarship from Basel’s public art collections subsequently enabled him to undertake study trips to Rome, Florence and Sicily.

During these travels, he discovered Ticino, a region he visited regularly, and developed a repertoire centred on Ticinese landscapes as well as views of the city of Basel. Following a stay in Ticino, the family settled in Basel, where he lived and worked until his death in 1961.

Born the son of a schoolteacher, he married Anna Raulf (1895–1971) in 1926; their union produced a son and a daughter. Walter and Anna Enholtz were buried in the family grave at Hörnli Cemetery in Riehen.

In terms of his health, he escaped a threat of blindness in childhood thanks to medical treatment, but remained hard of hearing and experienced difficulties with speech throughout his life.

Among the accounts of his cultural life is the fact that he enjoyed visiting the Kunstmuseum Basel with his great-nephew Paul Freiburghaus to show him works (e.g. by Arnold Böcklin), and that his favoured motifs included Ticino and views of Basel. The principal biographical reference cited for this dossier is the article by Karl Dick published in the Basler Stadtbuch 1962 (pp.

171–173).