Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), 1876, Le Pont de l’Europe. Collection: Association des amis du Petit Palais, Genève Photo/Foto: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

The Fondation de l’Hermitage shows 136 Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces from the Petit Palais in Geneva. In the 1950s, the industrialist Oscar Ghez (1905-1998) began acquiring works that reflect his remarkably free approach to collecting, with interest in late-19th and early 20th-century painting that was not exclusively confined to the great masters.

Alongside magnificent works by Édouard Manet and Auguste Renoir, he also acquired paintings by lesser-known artists at the time, such as Gustave Caillebotte, Charles Angrand, Maximilien Luce and Louis Valtat, some of whom have since become iconic.

A particular feature of the Ghez collection is his early acquisition of many works by women painters. In the late 1950s, the collector’s anti-conformist approach and belief that these artists had not been given their just value led him to purchase works by Marie Bracquemond, Suzanne Valadon, María Blanchard, Nathalie Kraemer, Jeanne Hébuterne, and Tamara de Lempicka, whose works have since gained much greater recognition.

Ghez’s approach to the main currents in figurative painting similarly took him off the beaten track. Alongside the great names of Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Fauvism, the School of Paris, and Cubism, his collection includes highly original works by lesser-known artists of the second half of the 20th century.