Berta Frölicher was born on February 9, 1829 and died on February 22, 1896. She was the mother-in-law of ex-Federal Counsellor Bernhard Hammer, who came from Solothurn, where, according to the Appenzeller Zeitung, Herisau, on May 28, 1888, Muller-Ury was about to begin painting Mr Frölicher and his wife. Der Bund, May 14, 1892, identifies the portraits as ‘ein Herr und eine Frau F.’, but the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, June 3, 1892, specifically describes the works as ‘die Schwieger-eltern des Herrn Alt-Bundesraths Hammer, das Ehepaar Fröhlicher [sic] aus Solothurn, darstellen’. Hammer had married the sitter’s daughter Anna (1859-1910) in 1884 as his second wife.
