Albert Samuel Anker (April 1, 1831 - July 16, 1910) 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, Switzerland as the son of veterinarian Samuel Anker (then a member of the constituent assembly of the Canton of Bern), 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 1849-51, he attended the Gymnasium Kirchenfeld in Bern, graduating with the Matura. Afterwards, he studied theology, beginning in 1851 in Bern and continuing at the university of Halle, Germany. But in Germany he ...