With Johann Jakob Biedermann, Peter und Samuel Birmann, Joseph Anton Maria Christen, Melchior Paul von Deschwanden, Felix Maria Diogg, Johann Heinrich Füssli, Rudolf Heinrich Füssli, Anton Graff, Louis Aimé Grosclaude, Heinrich Hauser, Gabriel Ludwig Lory, Johann Baptist Marzohl, Sigismund Meyer von Schauensee, Jakob Christoph Miville, Hans-Jakob Oeri, Ignaz Pfyffer von Altishofen, Clara Reinhard, Josef Reinhard, Léopold Robert, Jost Schiffmann, Augustin Schmid, Franz Schrotzberg, Ludwig Vogel, Johann Georg Volmar, Jakob Samuel Weibel, Johann Melchior Wyrsch

Civil society as we know it today emerged around 1800. The self-confident middle class founded numerous associations and educational institutions, including the Kunstgesellschaft Luzern in 1819 to put together a picture archive for the general populace. On the occasion of the anniversary, the presentation of the collection will focus on that revolutionary epoch with special reference to the Friedrich Schiller quotation.

The upheavals in society and politics also had an impact on art. This is particularly evident in changes in the genre of the portrait, which moved from courtly pomp and ceremonial strictness to a bourgeois lifestyle and intimacy. History painters approached new themes, while religious art adopted different forms of depictions. With its ancient cities and warmer climate Italy continued to be the model and the country of longing for many artists. But Switzerland, surrounded by absolutist states and the homeland of William Tell, also was stylized as a place of Republican freedom and bucolic idylls.