Jean Crotti's spiritual beginnings deeply affected his development as an artist. Born in 1878 in Bulle, near Fribourg in the western, French-speaking section of Switzerland, his early arts education was in Germany and France. Crotti struggled with questions of a religious and spiritual nature while at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich and the Académie Julian in Paris. As an artist, he wrote, "seems to be an instrument of God charged with transmitting messages to men....art must be therefore a kind of magic, bringing signs and messages to man..." He left school in 1902 in order to detach himself and become independent as an artist.

His earliest paintings (1900-1908) are quite domestic scenes reminiscent o...