Peter Robert Berry II
(1864 – 1942)
Peter Robert Berry recorded the stages of his life in diaries and numerous letters. This is characteristic of a time of upheaval: the transformation from "fashionable" spa doctor to secluded painter illustrates the conflict between the world of guests and summer visitors and the desire not to deal with the Engadin solely as a landscape occupied by tourists.
Rich in interests and inclinations, connected to music, committed to writing, his special inclination was painting. Giovanni Segantini, whom he knew personally and admired, is to be mentioned as a central role model. Early on he sought advice from the Bergell artist Giovanni Giacometti and found decisive support in his desire to paint.
Peter Robert Berry's interest focused on the Engadine landscape, and his most powerful pictures are linked to it. He sought out unspoilt nature with its own motifs and moods of light, as here on the Bernina Pass. The photograph shows Berry in front of his painting "Das grosse, stille Leuchten" (The great, still glow", 1910).
The viewer's gaze is drawn from the pass towards Piz dal Teo in Valposchiavo, the horizon is flat and wide. It is a sky that does not center, but rather promises a whole panorama. The brushstrokes blend into a horizontal flow, and one is almost tempted to turn on one's axis and squint into the warm afternoon sun.
Like Segantini, Berry painted his mountain pictures in the open air. A large wooden box held the canvas; a wooden hut provided makeshift protection against the wind; boots, gaiters, coat and hat had to suffice in the snow and cold.
Biography
Peter Robert Berry II was born in St. Moritz on 11 September 1864 as the eldest son of the spa doctor Peter Robert Ber ry I and his wife Cecilia Berry-Stoppani. After attending the cantonal school in Chur, he studied medicine at the universities of Zurich, Heidelberg and Leipzig. After completing his doctorate in 1892, he worked for a short time at a London hospital.
In 1893 he accepts the position of chief physician of the "Heilquellen-Gesellschaft" St. Moritz-Bad. However, after his engagement to the rich American Kitty Spalding, he gives up this position in 1895 and spends his time in Paris and Berlin with additional studies, especially surgery. Nevertheless, his desire to become a painter and to succeed as an artist emerges during this time. Not least because of this, the engagement is broken off in 1896/97 and P. R. Berry returns to the Engadine.
He meets the painter Giovanni Segantini, whose project of a panorama of the Engadine for the Paris World Exhibition of 1900 he eagerly supports. The desire to paint is particularly pronounced during this time of self-discovery and doubt. His attempts with coloured pencils and pastels could not satisfy him. In 1898 he therefore turned to his friend Giovanni Giacometti with the request to introduce him to the art of oil painting. But on 28 September 1899 Giovanni Segantini died of abdominal inflammation on the Schafberg near Pontresina.
Below is a small document from the life of Peter Robert Berry II. In 1935, the painter received a visit from Viktor R. Pfrunder, who recorded the scenes on film.
Berry takes an active part in the discussions about the development of his home town. In 1898, he wrote the pamphlet "Über die Zukunft des Kurortes St. Moritz" (On the future of the spa town of St. Moritz), in which he spoke out against the advertising of tuberculosis patients in the Engadine: soon a causal (immune) therapy could be expected, then these sanatoriums would degenerate into "high alpine oyster beds à la Schatzalp". St. Moritz should rather become a "world spa resort for summer and winter, with all facilities for spa use, sports and entertainment". Berry is held in high esteem in the valley and acts for the community as a member of the building and spa commissions.
Berry faces the tourist development with an ironic distance. After Segantini's death, he wrote in 1899: "Our life would be a vegetation up here, far away from all stimulation of society, science and art, if we did not find in nature a full-value substitute for everything that we otherwise lack in means of recreation and edification. I have always been a great nature lover. Only Segantini taught me to see so much in nature & for this I am indebted to him."
In 1900 Berry began studying painting at the Académie Julian in Paris, probably on the advice of friends Giovanni Giacometti and Andrea Robbi, who had attended this school years earlier. In 1901/1902 he studied at the private Heinrich Knirr painting school in Munich, where the emphasis was on precise drawing. At the same time he frequented courses at the "Königliche Thier-Arzney-Schule" (later the veterinary faculty of the Ludwig Maximilian University), which explains the sovereign depiction of horse anatomy - especially in full motion - in his works.
1903, 1904 and 1906 followed further stays in Paris and renewed studies at the Académie Julian and the Académie of Montparnasse. In 1908 P. R. Berry settled again in the Engadine and married Maria Rocco, a granddaughter of Johannes Badrutt from St. Moritz.
Between 1905 and 1914, P.R. Berry spent numerous winters in the hospices on the Julier and Bernina passes. Here he painted in the freezing cold in the open air, played in the evenings in the lodgings on the piano he had brought with him (as can be seen in the painting "Bergfahrt mit Klavier", 1905) or immersed himself in his Nietzsche reading. In 1907 he made the acquaintance of Ferdinand Hodler, who was staying in Engadin for a few weeks at that time. P.R. Berry was also one of the co-founders of the "Comitato per il Museo Segantini", which in 1907 commissioned the architect Nikolaus Hartmann Jr. to build the Segantini Museum.
In 1918, during the outbreak of the Spanish flu, Berry is once again intensively active as a doctor, otherwise he devotes himself exclusively to painting. The family lives in modest circumstances and sustains itself not least through Maria Berry-Rocco's foreign language lessons. In 1912 his only son, Peter Robert Berry III, called Pierin, was born.
Peter Robert Berry is not a marketer of his works. He cannot and does not want to get any of the contemporary gallery owners on his side; he occasionally refers to his works as his "children. To exhibit his complete works is a wish that is expressed in letters and writings, but may not succeed. In addition, both the First World War of 1914-1918 and the world economic crisis of 1929 lead to an extraordinarily difficult situation also in the Engadine.
Peter Robert Berry II dies on November 14, 1942 in St. Moritz. He leaves behind his wife and his son, Peter Robert Berry III (1912-1983), who will also work as a doctor in St. Moritz. It is only after his death that the works of Peter Rober Berry II are shown in an overview in 1945 as part of a memorial exhibition in the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur.
