Art and friendship

It began very romantically. The budding ophthalmologist and the student at the drawing school in St. Gallen had married at a very young age against the opposition of her parents. They became wealthy and began to build up their collection in 1907. Arthur Hahnloser was a member of the board of the Kunstverein, which was committed to bringing a breath of fresh air to the emerging museum landscape. This breath of fresh air was a mere breeze when it came to membership of the Kunstverein, which was of course not open to women.

Through a friend, the couple made contact with Giovanni Giacometti and bought a self-portrait from him in his home village of Stampa. From Giacometti, they travelled to Ferdinand Hodler in Geneva, where they also bought a painting. The following year, at Giacometti's suggestion, they visited a Cézanne exhibition in Paris and met Felix Vallotton. Their purchase of "Bathers" quickly became a talking point in Winterthur, as word spread that a naked woman was hanging on the Hahnlosers' wall. Valloton in turn knew Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, who naturally also enriched the collection with paintings.

The special thing about the collection was not just the great enthusiasm for modernism. Relationships with the artists were also important to the couple. The Hahnlosers were not just collectors of paintings, but to a certain extent also of friendship, which was particularly close with Félix Vallotton. Over the course of 30 years and following a large inheritance, they added works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet and van Gogh to their collection. Hedy Hahnloser once wrote that the relationships with the painters meant just as much to her as the paintings in the villa: "The deepening affiliation with the circle of artist friends became the richest content of our lives."

Many very good paintings hang in the pretty museum. But as in every museum, everyone finds a few favourites. Vincent van Gogh's unusual perspective painting with the green billiard table, the red walls and the yellow lamps in his favourite café in Arles jumped out at me first, certainly one of the most famous paintings in the collection and not an original choice on my part.

But it is simply marvellous. There are a dozen paintings by Felix Vallonton. My favourite was a forest picture in which he had painted silence and I smiled at his great interest in female nudity: why, for example, should his model read her book with her upper body bare? I also thought Toulouse-Lautrec's painting of a red-haired woman was great. Incidentally, the Louvre rejected his paintings after his death, a decision that unsurprisingly does not feature prominently in the museum's self-promotion.

The villa itself is also very beautiful. It's great fun to wander through the former salon and the ten or so rooms on two floors - especially as it's very rare to see so many masterpieces in a private collection.

We recommend the Villa Flora website as an introduction, with lots of illustrations and information about the collection, the collector couple and the villa. The spring festival on 25 and 26 May in the beautiful garden is also definitely worth a visit.