Hans Sandreuter
Printed oeuvre

The artist Hans Sandreuter distinguished himself, in both painting and design pieces, as one of the leading exponents of Swiss naturalism and the Fin de siècle. He was a close friend of Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901). 

Sandreuter’s painterly work was relatively well recorded during his lifetime, including in William Ritter’s Art et Décoration Revue mensuelle d’Art Moderne (April 1899, p. 105-11) and most recently by Bernd Wolfgang Lindemann in Fin de Siècle in Basel. Hans Sandreuter 1850–1901 (Schwabe, Basel 2001). The artist’s small group of printed works remains comparably unknown. That they form such a small part of the artist’s work is surprising considering that, at his father’s behest, the 17-year-old Sandreuter had undertaken his first training at a lithography firm. It was only much later that Sandreuter would return to print work, during a prolific period in 1899, in which he produced a series of woodcuts and etchings in quick succession. The design and realisation of Sandreuter’s late graphic oeuvre is no doubt a far cry from the basic technical education he is likely to have received as an apprentice. A comprehensive record of the artist’s prints does not exist; the group of works presented here is likely to be both the first and most complete collection.