Johann Karl Bossard (centre left) and Gustav Gull (centre right) were part of an impressive network spanning Zurich und Lucerne. Members included painter Rudolf Koller (top left), art historian Josef Zemp (top centre), Swiss National Museum director Heinrich Angst (top right), art historian Johann Rudolf Rahn (bottom left) and architect Julius Stadler (bottom right). Swiss National Museum /gta Archiv / ETH Zurich, Gustav Gull

Creative connections: Bossard, Gull and the Swiss National Museum

In 1898, the architect Gustav Gull created designs for two cups as part of a collaboration with the goldsmith’s workshop run by Johann Karl Bossard in Lucerne. That same year, the newly built Swiss National Museum in Zurich, also designed by Gull, opened its doors to the public. Gull and Bossard’s impressive networks of contacts came together in the planning and design of the museum.

Cristina Gutbrod

Cristina Gutbrod is a freelance architectural historian and cultural mediator at the National Museum Zurich.

As a devotee of late historicism, Gustav Gull (1858-1942) had an extensive knowledge of historical forms, encompassing not just architecture but also decorative arts. During his time as a student and young architect, he had previously made drawings of goldwork items based on 16th- and 17th-century models. The cups he designed in 1898 were intended to mark the 70th birthdays of two men: painter Rudolf Koller and architect Julius Stadler. The cup Gull designed for Koller takes the form of a lobed chalice. It is fashioned from silver, the inside of the bowl is gold-plated and Koller’s coat of arms adorns the inside base. A dedication has been engraved around the foot, with the names of the givers on the underside.

**Cup commemorating the 70th birthday of Rudolf Koller (1828–1905), designed by Gustav Gull (freehand drawing, left), crafted by Atelier Bossard, Lucerne.** Swiss National Museum

The cup for Stadler has a stem featuring a knop adorned with leaves, and lobes at the foot and where the stem meets the bowl. Above these is an ornately chased band featuring a floral tendril pattern. The dedication is engraved on the outer rim of the bowl. The inside base of this cup also features a coat of arms, in this case Stadler’s, presented by an angel.

**Cup commemorating the 70th birthday of Julius Stadler (1828–1904), designed by Gustav Gull, crafted by Atelier Bossard, Lucerne.** gta Archiv / ETH Zurich, Bequest of Gustav Gull

Julius Stadler and Rudolf Koller had been close friends since their schooldays. Gustav Gull, who was a generation younger, had links to both of these prominent figures of the art world. During Gull’s studies at the School of Building of the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Stadler ‒ a former assistant to Gottfried Semper ‒ became a teacher, mentor and friend. Until his retirement in 1893 Stadler was a professor, teaching composition, style and ornamentation plus landscape drawing. It was he who advised Gull to attend the École des Arts industriels, the arts and crafts school in Geneva, for a few months after finishing his architecture degree. Stadler had been campaigning since the 1860s for a museum of applied arts to be established in Zurich along with a school of arts and crafts; the museum eventually opened in 1875, and the school was inaugurated in the city’s Selnau district in 1878. When Zurich emerged victorious as the preferred location for the new Swiss National Museum, the two institutions were placed under the museum’s auspices, and the school was able to start holding classes in the annexe of the main building, which was still under construction, in 1895.

**Watercolour drawing of the magnificent stove in Julius Stadler’s Seidenhof Room. The famous room from the Renaissance period in Zurich has been installed in the National Museum.** gta Archiv / ETH Zurich, Bequest of Gustav Gull

Stadler not only promoted the decorative arts, he also played a key role in the Künstlergesellschaft, a society of artists and art lovers in Zurich that he presided over throughout the 1880s. It was during this period that Gull first formed a friendship with Koller. Gull was a member of the Dienstagsgesellschaft, a social group centred around the painter, in which the architect crossed paths with key figures from the Zurich art scene. Koller and Gull would go on to become two of the main initiators of the Künstlerhaus organisation, a breakaway society formed in 1895. Just one year later, it would merge with the original association to form the Kunstgesellschaft Zurich. As a member of the exhibition committee, Gull organised the Koller anniversary exhibition in 1898, with works on display in the society’s own exhibition space in the Künstlerhaus on Talstrasse, as well as in the neighbouring stock exchange building and the artist’s studio across town. The underside of the foot of the cup designed by Gustav Gull in 1898 to mark Koller’s birthday is engraved with the names of the givers of this precious gift, thus highlighting the connections between Zurich’s artists: Arnold Böcklin, Julius Stadler, August Waldner (editor and publisher of the Schweizerische Bauzeitung journal of architecture and engineering), Friedrich Bluntschli (architect and professor at the Federal Polytechnic Institute), Albert Müller (former director of the Museum of Applied Arts and the School of Arts and Crafts), Richard Kissling (sculptor), Gustav Gull and Wilhelm Ludwig Lehmann (painter).

**Arnold Böcklin, painted by Rudolf Koller, 1846/1847.** Kunsthaus Zurich

**Rudolf Koller in his studio, built by Julius Stadler, in the Haus zur Hornau in Zurich, 1894.** Swiss National Museum

Gull’s design for the Swiss National Museum in 1890 laid the foundations for his glittering architectural career – from 1890 to 1910 he was Zurich’s most influential architect. However, the first major project he carried out was in Lucerne: the federal post office building, completed in 1888. Gull was awarded the commission after winning the design competition in 1885 together with Conrad von Muralt, his business partner at the time. Gull realised the building in his own name. To oversee the construction work in 1886, he and his wife Lydia, the daughter of Baden-based goldsmith Johann Jakob Leinbacher, moved their entire household from Zurich to Lucerne. The couple’s first two children, Lilly – who would go on to become a renowned gold- and silversmith – and Karl, were born there. Gustav and Lydia Gull doubtless visited Johann Karl Bossard’s goldsmith’s studio and antiques shop during their time in Lucerne. Having acquired a Renaissance-era building on Weggisgasse known as the ‘Zanetti-Haus’ in 1880, Bossard moved the workshop there from his parents’ home just a few blocks away on Rössligasse. By 1886, the building had been turned into the new headquarters for both lines of business.

**Postcard showing the Zanetti-Haus on Weggisgasse in Lucerne following its sale in 1912/1913.** Swiss National Museum

**Federal post office building in Lucerne, competition design by Gustav Gull in partnership with Conrad von Muralt, 1885.** ETH Library Zurich

Johann Rudolf Rahn played an important role in bringing Johann Karl Bossard (1846-1914) and Gustav Gull together. The art historian firmly believed that what could be termed ‘Swiss art’, with a national character, first began to emerge in the decorative arts of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. When the National Museum was set up in Zurich, he had a decisive voice in shaping both its acquisition policy and the design of the building itself. Like Julius Stadler, Rahn, a professor of art history at the University of Zurich from 1870 and then at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich from 1883, was one of the professors in the School of Building’s Architectura association. It was in this context that Gull was able to establish contact with Rahn at the beginning of the 1880s. Given that Johann Karl Bossard’s role as head of the goldsmith’s workshop and his expertise as an antiques dealer were of great importance to Rahn, the two men had been corresponding since the end of the 1870s. Bossard also exchanged letters with Heinrich Angst, a textile merchant, collector, British Vice Consul, and first director of the Swiss National Museum from 1892. Another key figure in these personal and professional networks stretching from Zurich to Lucerne, was the young art historian Josef Zemp, who had obtained his doctorate under Rahn in 1893. While the new National Museum was under construction, he was made assistant to the director in 1896 and given responsibility for installing the period rooms and original architectural elements. It was during this time that Zemp also advised August Edward Jessup and his wife Lady Mildred Marion Bowes-Lyon on the restoration of Lenzburg Castle. Bossard, who had probably helped the American to purchase the castle, designed the interiors and fitted them out with original, copied and true-to-style architectural elements. Zemp married Bossard’s daughter Maria Karolina in 1899 and was appointed Deputy Director of the National Museum in Zurich in 1904.

**Seven-piece tea and coffee service. Wedding present for Maria Karolina Bossard and Josef Zemp, created by Johann Karl Bossard, 1899.** Swiss National Museum

Whereas Gustav Gull had taken his cue from Italian Renaissance architecture when designing the federal post office building in Lucerne, he found inspiration for the National Museum building in Zurich in architectural forms found in Switzerland from the late Gothic to the Renaissance era. He harmonised his design for the museum to accommodate the period rooms dating from the 15th to the 1th centuries, a core part of the collection, which link the artisanal artefacts into a spatial whole. The exhibition rooms Bossard had set up in the Zanetti-Haus followed chronological and stylistic criteria, displaying both originals and copies of antiquities and ancient objects. It remains unclear whether Gull and the museum officials Rahn, Angst and Zemp drew inspiration from this. However, a Lucerne connection can definitely be found in the activities of artist, decorative painter and restorer Albert Benz, who had created the facades of the Zanetti-Haus for Bossard together with Friedrich Stirnimann, another painter who had been involved in the refurbishment of Lenzburg Castle and who had contributed to the interior finishings in the newly constructed National Museum. Benz, in turn, knew Seraphin Weingartner, Director of the Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts and brother of the talented Louis Weingartner, an apprentice at Atelier Bossard who would later go on to run the workshop. The Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts was involved in the fitting-out and decoration of the post office building designed by Gull.

**‘Lower Chapel’ at the National Museum Zurich with decorative finishes, shortly after completion.** Swiss National Museum

The personal, professional and artistic networks alluded to here that connect Gull and Bossard are many and varied. The 1898 cups realised by the two men document their collaboration, testify to their engagement as artists with historical decorative art and to their efforts to preserve this tradition, while also reflecting the view taken by the Swiss National Museum in Zurich at that time towards artisanal objects dating from the 15th to the 17th centuries.

More of: Exhibitions Landesmuseum Modern Age Culture Art Jewelry World of museums Collection

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