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The following biography is from the archives of askART.
The following personal recollections were submitted by Jennifer Dean:
My father, George Fitzgerrell, was a good friend of Werner's. I remember visiting Werner and wife, Bertha, in Los Angeles as a child and I visited them once as a young adult in San Francisco. I love his art work and have one of his paintings, a 9" x 12" oil painting, a beautiful view of Yosemite Valley.
My father told me that Werner was trained as a pastry chef in Switzerland. However, he left that field and he earned his living as a plumber in Los Angeles. He and Bertha lived in a bungalow with a detached garage. I am not certain if Bertha was Swiss, but I suspect she was. She certainly looked the part with her hair braided, and the braids wrapped around her head in traditional style. I believe they did not have children.
Werner did his painting on the side and he must have been very prolific because his garage was full of art work. I vividly remember one afternoon, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, when he took my father and me to the garage and showed us his work. He brought out painting after beautiful painting. I could tell that my father was impressed. Even as a child I knew that this was someone with exceptional talent. He was very kind. I admired a small carved wooden statue of a bear in his house and he gave it to me on the spot.
Although his paintings show his sensitivity, in person Werner did not strike one as a sensitive person—"colorful" would probably have been the appropriate adjective. He was good humored and very animated.
Werner and Bertha spent much of their lives in Los Angeles, but they loved San Francisco and had a dream of retiring there. They eventually made the move, but they had some regrets afterwards. They were relative strangers in San Francisco and missed their Los Angeles friends. Werner told my father, "I had thirty years of friends in Los Angeles, Fitzie."
I am not sure how frequently Werner exhibited his work, but I know that my father bought the Yosemite painting as a gift for me at a show of his works at Ankrum Gallery. The painting date is 1973, I am not sure of the date of the date of the exhibition but I would guess 1973 or 1974.
I visited Werner and Bertha in SF in approximately 1977. They lived in a nice apartment building. I had dinner with them and I can testify that Werner was an excellent chef. He cooked dinner that night and it was superb. I believe he did a lot of the cooking in the family.
My father told me that Bertha moved to an artists' colony in Redding after Werner's death.