the Swiss gallery that went global

On a bright, chilly Saturday in January, a line of visitors snaked around the courtyard of an art gallery on a farm in Bruton, Somerset. They had come to view an exhibition of new work by young artists and, as a local jazz band called The New Academic Feetwarmers played old-time tunes and smoke billowed from a wood-fired grill, they were offered grilled sausages in buns, paper bowls of vegetable soup, and mulled cider.

The whole event was free, courtesy of the man who stood in the middle of the courtyard, chatting to all-comers and offering drinks from a bottle of Maid of Bruton sparkling rosé from the vineyard on his family’s 100-acre Durslade Farm. He was bespectacled, with a trim greying beard, wore a brown checked tweed jacket and cream silk scarf, and looked happily at ease. Once or twice, he stepped away from the crowd to take a private call.

He could have passed as an unusually stylish English farmer, but he was not. This was Iwan Wirth, the Swiss art dealer who, with his wife Manuela and mother-in-law Ursula Hauser, owns Hauser & Wirth, one of the largest and most powerful galleries in the world. It has 17 gallery spaces, from Los Angeles to London, Zurich and Monaco, represents 103 artists and artists’ estates, and trades paintings worth millions.

Some of the Durslade visitors browsed in its farm shop, part of a hospitality business called Artfarm that is owned by the couple and runs alongside Hauser & Wirth. There, they could buy meat from the farm, or a £225 bottle of whisky from the couple’s Fife Arms hotel in Braemar, Scotland (“sweet fruits and light spice, layered with a hint of old leather”). Chefs from Roth Bar & Grill, a restaurant attached to the Durslade gallery, prepared the food.

Hauser & Wirth is opening another space in Basel this summer and one more on South Audley Street in Mayfair, London, next year. That…