Wilhelm Balmer
Born in 1865.
Died in 1922.
Wilhelm Balmer (1865–1922), whose full name was Paul Friedrich Wilhelm Balmer, was a Basel painter and sculptor. After completing his secondary education, he attended drawing classes with Fritz Schider in Basel and initially began an apprenticeship as a carpenter. From 1884 to 1889, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
He subsequently travelled to France, London and the Netherlands, copied the old masters and worked in Rome in 1890–1891. In Paris, during the winter of 1891–1892, he painted his first landscapes outdoors. On his return to Basel, he became known for portrait commissions, particularly of families.
In its presentation of Quatre frères (1903–1904), the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne highlights his talent as a portraitist of children, already noted in Portrait de la famille Vischer-Sarasin of 1897. Balmer stayed in Munich and then Florence, while also taking part in the renovation and painted decoration of Basel’s town hall between 1900 and 1903. Settled in Bern from 1908, he collaborated on the Landsgemeinde fresco conceived by his friend Albert Welti for the Federal Palace, completed after Welti’s death.
A painter of genre scenes and landscapes, he also devoted himself to sculpture, particularly during the final years of his life.
