The volunteer’s return

Completed in 1867 and now at the Kunstmuseum Basel, this canvas depicts the return of a Swiss volunteer soldier — a subject charged with national and emotional meaning in the years immediately following the American Civil War, which Buchser had witnessed firsthand. Buchser spent 1866–71 in the United States specifically to document the aftermath of the Civil War and its impact on American society, meeting Abraham Lincoln's widow, traveling through the South, and producing the most historically significant body of Swiss painting ever made in America. His experiences in the US, combined with his own Swiss military background, gave the theme of the returning volunteer immediate personal resonance. The volunteer soldier in Swiss context referred to the militia system fundamental to Swiss national identity: citizens serving as part-time soldiers, returning to civilian life between deployments. The reuniting of soldier and community is rendered as private human reality rather than patriotic spectacle — consistent with Buchser's broader commitment to direct observation over heroic convention.

The composition stages an intimate moment of return — figure arriving, community responding — in a manner that required careful organisation of spatial relationships and emotional registers. Buchser's extended observational practice in America sharpened his ability to capture transient human situations, and the Kunstmuseum Basel canvas shows the confident figure arrangement of his mature period.