BERNHARDT-MÜLLER, Berta (The Artist’s Sister)

Description:
Dressed in black facing left, without a hat. Oil on canvas, 21.1/4” x 14.1/4”, signed upper right. Probably painted c. 1888.

Location:
Private Collection, London, UK.

Provenance:
The artist’s niece Erna Minder-Gähler, bequeathed to her nephew Peter Conrad in 1983; by descent.

A photograph of the sitter in her twenties.

The sitter (30 August 1868 – 27 November 1948) was the eleventh child of Alois and Genovefa Müller-Lombardi.

According to the late Peter Conrad, the picture hung in the simple home of the sitter, Berta Emilie Bernhart-Müller at St. Fiden (St. Gallen) when he was in Switzerland in 1946-47 and represented her. In a contemporary frame similar to that of her sister Adelina.