"Lydia Welti-Escher (1858-1891) grew up in the Villa Belvoir in Zurich. The only surviving child of Alfred Escher (1819-1882) and his wife Augusta Uebel, Lydia grew up in an environment imbued with economics and politics. Her father was not only the promoter of the Gotthard railway and founder of the 'Schweizerische Kreitanstalt' (today's Credit Suisse) but by far the most powerful politician-entrepreneur of his time. In 1883 Lydia married Friedrich Emil Welti (1857-1940), the sone of the Federal councillor with the same name, who went on to have a brilliant career as a result of the marriage. It was through her husband that Lydia met the Bernese artist Karl Stauffer, and they fell in love. In the late 1880's, the two lovers fled to Rome, where, at the instigation of her family, Lydia was forcibly interned in a psychiatric clinic, while Karl Stauffer was arrested on the charge of assault against a person of unsound mind. When Lydia returned to Switzerland she accepted her husband's request for divorce ands ordered to pay her husband damages of 600,000 francs. Never fully integrated into Zurich society, now outlawed as an adulteress, the former lady of Belvoir went into voluntary exile in French-speaking Switzerland. In 1891, Lydia took her own life, like Stauffer did a few months earlier in prison. Before this tragic act, she left her inheritance to the Swiss Confederation so that it would fund the Gottfried Keller Foundation that she had set up. Lydia wrote: "This Decision was born out of my desire to be useful to the country in a field, the care of which is well suited to awake and cultivate a sense of beauty and nobility."
The Paintings in the exhibition, and those shown here, are all Swiss artists.
Termed 'The Alpine Triptych:
Life
Nature
Felix Valloton, Still Life, 1914
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