# Ernst Morgenthaler artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/ernst-morgenthaler/
Profile generated: 2026-05-27T18:41:19.062Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1887-12-11
- Death date: 1962-09-07
- Nationality: Swiss
- Common media: painting, printmaking / engraving, graphic art

## About Ernst Morgenthaler

Ernst Morgenthaler (1887–1962) was a Swiss painter, graphic artist, and printmaker active in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Ursenbach in the canton of Bern, he spent much of his working life in Zürich, where he died in 1962. Morgenthaler worked across oil painting, printmaking, and graphic art, contributing to the Swiss visual-arts scene during a period of significant modernist development. He is recorded in major art-historical authority files including the Getty Union List of Artist Names, the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), and the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). His wife, Sasha Morgenthaler, was a celebrated Zürich doll maker, and his son Fritz Morgenthaler became known as a psychoanalyst and painter. With over 220 documented lots, Morgenthaler's work continues to appear at auction.

## Common works and media

Morgenthaler is associated with paintings in oil, watercolors, graphic works, and engravings. Collectors and appraisers may encounter landscape subjects, figurative compositions, and still-life works typical of early- and mid-twentieth-century Swiss painting, as well as prints and editioned graphic works. His output spans canvas, paper, and print matrices.

## Market and appraisal context

Ernst Morgenthaler's work appears regularly in the European and Swiss auction market across paintings, prints, and works on paper. Key factors influencing appraisal include the specific medium and support, the date of execution, subject matter, provenance, and condition. For prints, edition size and numbering are relevant. Collectors should note that no catalogue raisonné has been identified in public sources, so attribution and dating benefit from expert review. Comparable public auction records provide the most reliable value context.

## Appraisily data basis

This artist page combines identity research from library authority files (Getty ULAN, VIAF, RKD, Library of Congress) with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. Biographical data is drawn from institution-grade sources and corroborated across multiple authority databases.

## Sources

- RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/57742
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1359543
- VIAF (OCLC): https://viaf.org/viaf/32791894/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500085340
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n83300875
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Morgenthaler