Description

Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965) trained as a businessman and worked in the family firm of Volkart Brothers in Winterthur. At the age of 39 he left the company to devote himself to his art collection, taking up residence in the Am Romerholz villa, built by the architect Maurice Turrettini in 1915. Reinhart gave his collection of eighteenth- to twentieth-century German, Swiss and Austrian art to the town of Winterthur, where it has been on display in the Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten since 1951. That part of his collection housed in the Am Romerholz villa he bequeathed to the Swiss nation. Open to the public since 1970, this collection comprises 207 works of European art from the Late Gothic period to the early twentieth century. It contains some outstanding Old Master paintings and drawings, including items by Grunewald, Cranach the Elder, Holbein the Younger, Rubens and Chardin, but the main focus is on French nineteenth-century painting, with major works by David, Ingres, Gericault, Delacroix, Corot, Daumier, Courbet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh and others. The Am Romerholz villa was restored and expanded in 1997-98 by the Zurich architects Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer.