MÜLLER, Lina (The Artist’s Youngest Sister)

Description:
Bust length as a young girl holding a ginger cat. Oil on canvas, 23.1/2″ x 18.3/4″ (oval inside 22.1/4″ x 18.1/4″), signed at base ‘A. Muller-Ury 8/94 Hospenthal’.

Location:
Adolfo Muller-Ury Stiftung, Hospental, Switzerland

Lina Müller in her twenties.

Lina Felizia (25 April 1881 – 20 January 1978) was youngest sister of the artist and nineteenth child of Alois and Genovefa Müller-Lombardi. Here she is depicted aged 13 years old. The portrait has hung in her bedroom in the Haus Müller-Lombardi for many years.

She inherited what was left of the artist’s estate in 1947, which was not actually that much, but the Stiftung Adolfo Muller-Ury had already been established in the Haus Müller-Lombardi, and the Haus behind this called Wesemli, which is in many ways an extension of the estate, was for about twenty years run by her as a Pensione.