Albert Anker

The pen and ink drawing signed by Albert Anker employs occasional white highlights, delineating the white blouse of the girl writing and the light behind her head. She is wearing the simple traditional attire typical of the Bern region that includes a black bodice and white blouse. Much care has been taken in the depiction of the fingers, the left hand lying has been repeated twice. The subtlety of the moment has been captured in its entirety with just a few cursory outlines and, in places, only hints of hatching. Albert Anker is demonstrating in this drawing that school education was not only accessible to girls from the urban middle classes, but also to ones from the rural population’s lower classes. The canton of Bern had introduced compulsory education in 1835. The liberal elite regarded the development and prosperity of a democratic state and the improvement and expansion of the education system as being inextricably linked. Such a focus on the politics of education arose from a combination of state policy, ideological motives, and socio-political considerations. The newly won freedoms and the associated obligations and rights of citizens required a minimum level of education. In order to ensure the functioning of liberal democracy in the long term, the population’s level of education was to be raised by improving the school system.

The present drawing comes from the art collection of Carl Ludwig Lory (1838–1909), a member of the Lory family of artists and a successful entrepreneur and collector, who bequeathed his art collection to Kunstmuseum Bern upon his death.