Gottfried Locher (1735 - 1795)

Gottfried Locher

Gottfried Locher was a Swiss artist, painter and printmaker.

Locher is considered the most important painter in western Switzerland in the transition from rococo. In 1759 he was admitted to the Freiburg fraternity of St. Luke. Until his death he worked as a draughtsman, engraver, portraitist, altarpiece and church painter. He decorated churches, secular buildings and, as his Excellency's court painter, the government buildings of Fribourg with frescoes.

Gottfried Locher taught his art to his sons François (1765-1799) and Jean-Emmanuel (1769-1840) and they also became artists, working in his father's studio.