ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Throughout the nineteenth century, many great artists were attracted to the mountains and valleys of Switzerland. One of the most important was Alexandre Calame (1810–1864), a native Swiss painter who grew up near Lake Geneva. Calame briefly trained with François Diday (1802–1877), but his reputation quickly surpassed that of his mentor and the two became rivals. Calame's paintings of the Swiss landscape are remarkably naturalistic depictions of lakes, high peaks, and rushing waterfalls, but at the same time, he considered them meditations on the theme of nature and the divine.

This exhibition, drawn from the extensive collection of Asbjorn R. Lunde, brings together for the first time in America a unique group of paintings and sketches by Calame and places them in the context of the nineteenth-century landscape tradition. Calame's works are shown alongside those of his precursors, his contemporaries, and his followers, offering a rare opportunity to explore the development of the often-overlooked yet significant Swiss school of landscape painting.

Alpine Views
Alexandre Calame and the Swiss Landscape

By Alberto de Andrés

This handsome book features an essay by noted Swiss art historian Alberto de Andrés discussing Calame's landscapes in the context of nineteenth-century trends in European art and culture, as well as thirty-eight color plates of works in the exhibition—many of which have never been published in color. It explores the work of Calame as well as that of François Diday, Barthélemy Menn, and Robert Zünd. 

88 pages
9 1/2 x 10 inches
46 color illustrations
2006
$19.95
Published by the Sterling and Francine
Clark Art Institute, and distributed by
Yale University Press, New Haven and London