Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Albert Samuel Anker was a Swiss painter and illustrator who has been called the "national painter" of Switzerland because of his enduringly popular depictions of 19th-century Swiss village life. Born in Ins as the son of veterinarian Samuel Anker, Anker attended school in Neuchâtel, where he and Auguste Bachelin, later a fellow artist, took early drawing lessons with Louis Wallinger in 1845 48. In 1849 and 1851, he attended the Gymnasium Kirchenfeld in Bern, graduating with the Matura.