Johann Hautle, an 80-year-old farmer from the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, represents one of the last surviving practitioners of traditional Alpine folk painting. His artworks, depicting rural life in eastern Switzerland, have traveled far beyond his small farm in Gonten, reaching prestigious venues including the Louvre Museum in Paris, while the artist himself has barely ever left his homeland.

Standing in his gray pants, light blue shirt, and suspenders artfully decorated with edelweiss flowers, Hautle embodies the very scenes he paints. He tends to his four remaining cows, lights his pipe at the fountain in front of his farmhouse, and watches the long shadows fall across the meadows as the peaks of the Alpstein mountains glow in the evening light. "This is where I feel comfortable," he says simply in his local dialect. "This is where I'm at home."

Hautle is deeply rooted in the Chuterenegg area of Gonten, a place he has scarcely left throughout his eight decades of life. Here, he finds the motifs that inspire his art as one of the last traditional Bauernmaler (farmer painters), working in the tradition of 19th-century masters like Franz Anton Haim and Johann Baptist Zeller. This distinctive form of folk art originated in eastern Switzerland during the 16th century, initially focusing on painted furniture decorated with plants, ornaments, and rural scenes.

The tradition evolved in the 19th century into Senntumsmalerei (Alpine dairy farming painting), commissioned by farmers and Alpine herders who wanted their world depicted on wooden panels and milk bucket bottoms. These works portrayed daily rural life: cattle drives up to mountain pastures, milking and cheese-making scenes, and the surrounding landscape. Important historical practitioners included Bartholomäus Lämmler, Franz Anton Haim, and Johann Baptist Zeller.

Over the past sixty years, Hautle has created several hundred paintings. Many hang in the Appenzell Museum, others grace private homes around the globe, and still more fill an entire room in his farmhouse. What makes his work particularly authentic, according to Rebekka Dörig, director of Appenzell Innerrhoden's cultural office, is that he actually lives the life he depicts. "His works have something playful yet possess great depth," she explains. "Hautle has continuously refined his craft over this long period and created a significant body of work. As a farmer painter today, he probably stands alongside the old masters."

On a hot August afternoon, Hautle sits in his studio – actually the living room table of his home. Holding a small brush in his right hand and a cloth in his left, with his glasses perched far forward on his nose, the artist focuses entirely on his newest painting. Using professional brushes made from Siberian weasel hair with fine, elastic tips, he carefully applies paint from a palette. With steady hands, he dots the udders and eyes of cows, draws a farmer's clothing here, paints a horse's tail there, or adds a house roof. Stroke by stroke, he brings his rural world to life.

Hautle works in his studio every day, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for four. "I paint to pass the time," he says with a mischievous smile, "and because I enjoy doing it." This creative work rejuvenates him – when he picks up his brush, the aches and pains of age fade away. He no longer feels the hip pain or notices the limp that troubles him. "I may be eighty," he says, "but when I paint, I feel twenty years younger."

The ideas for his works come naturally to him. He needs no inspiration from earlier farmer painters whose works hang in his living room, emphasizing that he has never copied from others. Instead, he draws from his imagination and memory. "My pictures are deep inside me," he explains. This comes from good reason – the world he paints has been familiar to him since birth.

Johann grew up as one of four children on a farm in Enggenhütten in the municipality of Schlatt-Haslen, just a few kilometers from his current home. His youth was shaped by simplicity and hard work. Children attended school only half-days, then had to help on the farm with haying, mucking stalls, feeding, and milking. "That was normal back then," Hautle recalls without bitterness. "We helped each other – there was no room for special requests."

Rather than being deterred by the hard work and hardships, he embraced this way of life. He chose neither an apprenticeship as a craftsman nor further education. "I had a dream job," he remembers. "I wanted to do what my ancestors had done." At twenty, with his father's help, he took over his uncle's farm. "I simply became a farmer. And that was that."

He discovered his second great passion unexpectedly, thanks to his older brother Sepp, who practiced farmer painting in his spare time. As a teenager, Johann watched over his brother's shoulder and found himself drawn to the works of the old masters whose paintings decorated their family home. At eighteen, he sat down at the table himself, took brush and paint in hand. "I just did it," he says of his debut. "I didn't learn it. It was inside me."

Soon, painting became as much a part of his daily routine as feeding and milking his animals. He developed his own style, simplified subjects, and painted with oil paints on wooden and Pavatex panels. Neither setbacks nor criticism discouraged him. When a painting didn't turn out as desired, he set it aside and returned to complete it later. When a colleague once criticized his work, saying his pictures weren't art and he had no talent, Hautle remained calm and continued painting exactly as before.

His persistence paid off. Today, Johann Hautle is recognized as a master of his craft. His works have been exhibited in prestigious museums including the Louvre in Paris. His clientele spans the globe, from Bangkok to Urnäsch, with most customers visiting him personally to select their pieces. Hautle spends twenty to thirty hours on smaller paintings, sometimes months on larger works. This dedication commands its price: his paintings cost between several hundred and several thousand Swiss francs.

Customers come from all walks of life and age groups, Hautle notes. "I've sold to an oil merchant from Asia. Occasionally, even a student will choose one of my pictures." For Hautle, painting serves not only as a source of joy and happiness but also as important supplementary income. "I could have made a living from art for a long time," he admits, but chose against it because of his attachment to farming.

For forty-five years, Hautle operated his farm on the Chuterenegg with many animals. During summers, he worked as an Alpine herder on the Meglisalp, making cheese and helping at the mountain inn of the same name. "I still had energy then, never got tired," he recalls. This changed with age, so at sixty-five, he scaled back, leasing most of his land while remaining on the farm. He couldn't bring himself to quit farming entirely and today keeps four cows and raises calves. "I don't need this work to live anymore, but farming is a beautiful hobby."

How long he can continue this lifestyle and what will happen to the farm later remains uncertain, as Johann Hautle has no descendants. "Starting a family just didn't happen in my life," he says simply. However, he's not alone in daily life – a friend has helped him for years with household tasks and farm work, shopping, cooking, and caring for the calves. "Without her help, I could hardly live here today."

The thought of having to move away is something Hautle cannot imagine. He has put down roots as deep as the trees surrounding his house. In his lifetime, he has rarely left the farm. He was stationed in Basel during military service and once traveled to South Tyrol with a couple friends, but was relieved to return home after two days. Years ago, when his paintings were exhibited in Shanghai, China, and Paris, and he was invited to visit, he declined without hesitation. "It never would have occurred to me to travel there," he says matter-of-factly. "Anywhere else would make me terribly homesick."

Johann Hautle knows where he belongs. Standing in front of his house this evening on the Chuterenegg, he draws contentedly on his pipe and gazes across the meadows where his cows graze. "This is as beautiful as sitting in a chair on the beach and looking out at the sea," he says with a smile. Then he watches young cats playing on the fountain edge and looks over the hills where the last rays of sunlight dance. It's a peaceful, picturesque scene – like a painting come to life.