Alexandre Calame
(Vevey 1810 - 1864 Menton)
Landscape in the Swiss Alps (probably Bernese Oberland)
c.1853-63
Oil on paper laid down on panel
29.3 x 37.8 cm
Signed lower left A.Calame
Valentina Anker, the author of the catalogue raisonné of Alexandre Calame's paintings, lists a group of works which all show a distinctly asymmetrical compositional structure. In this group - dateable to the period 1853-63 - Calame turns his attention to the study of the Rosenlaui region of the Bernese Oberland near the Wetterhorn.[1] The present painting can be ascribed to this group. It is signed in the lower left corner.
The right foreground is dominated by the jagged outline of a path - which leads at a sharp angle away from the viewer - and by angular rocks partly overgrown with moss and scrubby vegetation. The middle ground is taken up by a thick band of pine trees. The silhouette of the mountainside counters the perspectival rendering of the foreground. On its crest are single pines with plume-like crowns. The sky is laden with the threat of an impending storm.
The painting displays Calame's fascination with the varying effects of light. This is particularly evidenced in the way he handles the glare falling on the rock surfaces and the play of contrasts between the areas of light and those bathed in shadow, highlighting the multi-coloured strata of the rock. This sensitive painting skilfully evokes the atmospheric effects of the murky half-light that invades a landscape shortly before a storm.
Calame began his career as an employee of a banker named Diodati. It was Diodati who enabled him to take up painting. He financed Calame's studies from 1829 onwards under the landscape painter François Diday. Calame spent free moments colouring Swiss views which he sold to tourists.
He began to exhibit regularly in Geneva, Berlin and Leipzig in 1835 and from 1839 onwards was a regular contributor to the Paris Salon. This brought him considerable public recognition, particularly in France and Germany. Constantly searching for new motifs, he travelled widely in France, Germany and Holland. He visited Rome and Naples in 1844, where he first experienced the phenomenon of Italian light. His health began to fail in 1855 and this compelled him to restrict his travels to regions north of the Alps.
In the 1840s, Calame was ranked as one of Switzerland's best landscape painters in the company of such names as François Diday, Charles-Louis Guigon and Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer.
He received numerous awards during his lifetime but after his death in 1864, recognition of his work experienced something of a decline. However, today Calame is regarded as one of the major representatives of the Swiss Romantic heroic tradition in landscape and alpine painting.
[1] Valentina Anker, Alexandre Calame. Vie et oeuvre. Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Freiburg 1987, p.164 f. and nos. 540, 626, 711, 729, 783, 788.