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Cuno Amiet was born in Solothurn in 1868. As a teenager, he was already enthusiastic about art, taking his first drawing lessons in 1882, followed by painting lessons. After completing his secondary school education in 1886, Amiet enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 1888, he went to the Académie Julian in Paris with Giovanni Giacometti, whom he had met in Munich. In the summer of 1892 he travelled to the artists’ colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. After returning to Switzerland, the Swiss paper manufacturer Oscar Miller became his patron in 1896. After marrying Anna Luder, Amiet moved to Oschwand in the Oberaargau region in 1898. That same year, Amiet and Ferdinand Hodler began designing the wall decoration for the museum in Solothurn. They both took part in the 1904 Vienna Secession exhibition, but in 1905 they went their separate ways. In Oschwand, Amiet was regularly visited by artists and art enthusiasts, some of whom he took on as students, including Ernst Morgenthaler. Amiet took part in numerous exhibitions, but during the Second World War some of his work was destroyed as it was deemed “degenerate art”. In 1954 he represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale, and in 1960 the Kunsthalle Basel organised the last major retrospectives in Amiet’s lifetime. He died in 1961 in Oschwand.