Historical context
Albert Anker is the most widely-held Swiss painter of the 19th century — held in the sense that more Swiss households own an Anker reproduction than any other painter’s. He lived and worked his entire life in Ins, a village in the canton of Bern, painting the people who lived around him: schoolchildren, old farmers, midwives, women at hearths.
Old Man with Coffee Grinder (1886) belongs to his domestic-genre series. Coffee in late-19th-century Swiss farmhouses was not yet a daily drink for everyone; it was an afternoon ritual, often saved for Sundays or for visitors. The hand-cranked grinder in the old man’s lap was a normal kitchen object, not a craft object.
Anker’s technique is direct: oil on canvas, tight modeling on the face and hands, looser passages on the wall and the grinder body. The light is north-window light through a small interior — the Swiss farmhouse equivalent of Vermeer’s atelier light, drier and colder.
The file here is a 942 × 1177 px photographic reproduction of the canvas — considerably smaller than the source we’d want for a poster-scale print. At A5 / 6 × 8 inch framing the file prints cleanly; at A4 / 8 × 11 inch the brushwork begins to soften. We intend to source a higher-resolution scan from the Albert Anker catalogue raisonné (Bern, online) and update this file when we have it. Until then: print small and well.
Catalog
| Artist | Albert Anker Swiss, 1831–1910 |
|---|---|
| Title | Old Man with Coffee Grinder |
| Year | 1886 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Original size | private estate scale (canvas) |
| Holding | Swiss private and museum collections; reproduced from public-domain photographic record |
| License | Public Domain |
| Archive № | CA-004 |
Print specifications
The size at which this file is genuinely ready. Heavy matte paper, slim walnut frame, mid-weight cream mat. Reads like a small framed object in a private room.
Brushwork softens slightly. Wider mat compensates. Not our first recommendation; we’d update the file before recommending larger.
We’ll publish a larger-print file when we have a museum-grade scan of the original canvas. The Albert Anker catalogue raisonné (Bern) is the source we’re working toward.
Source statement
Digital source: public-domain photographic reproduction of the canvas, accessed via Wikimedia Commons. The work entered public domain by virtue of the artist’s death in 1910 (Switzerland, life + 70).
Original work: Albert Anker (1831–1910), Old Man with Coffee Grinder, oil on canvas, 1886. Held in Swiss private and museum collections.
Restoration notes. Mild contrast lift to compensate for the photographic flatness of the source reproduction. No retouching applied to the painted surface.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.