**Calame’s feel for Alpine nature influenced many 19th century artists. This painting of the region surrounding Lake Lucerne dates back to 1852.** Wikimedia / Amsterdam Museum

Calame’s awe-inspiring Alpine views

Alexandre Calame is considered one of the fathers of Alpine landscape painting. And it all started, figuratively speaking, with a storm.

Barbara Basting

Barbara Basting worked as a cultural editor and currently heads the visual arts division in the City of Zurich’s Culture Department.

A stormy wind blows across a deserted high mountain valley. It has already uprooted a majestic fir tree, and is blowing spray over a bubbling mountain stream and wisps of mist across an imposing mass of rock. Fortunately, we are in the dry, perhaps standing on the bank, or on a solid rock like the one braving the torrent in the middle of the stream. On the horizon there is a ray of light, which makes us think that perhaps the worst is over.

Painter Alexandre Calame (1810–64) attracted widespread admiration when he presented his work Storm at Handeck for the first time in Geneva in 1839. Most of his contemporaries only knew the mountains from afar. Compared with today, all types of pictures were rare; photography had only just been invented and was far from being a mass medium. But the grandiose painting with its opulent gold plated frame, a showpiece of Geneva’s Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, still manages to captivate us because it propels us right to the heart of the action.

Storm at Handeck, painting by Alexandre Calame, 1839. — *Storm at Handeck*, painting by Alexandre Calame, 1839. Musée d'art et d'histoire, Genève

At the time, it was even hailed as Switzerland’s ‘first national artwork’. Soon after, artist and art critic Rodolphe Toepffer championed a national art based on depictions of the Alps. Storm at Handeck was even awarded a gold medal at the trendsetting Paris Salon in 1839, which led to Calame’s Alpine landscape painting becoming popular throughout Europe. He even influenced North American landscape painting, which was still relatively new. One of Calame’s many pupils was Albert Bierstadt, whose scenes of the Rocky Mountains are still considered iconic in American art.

A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, painting by Albert Bierstadt, 1866. — *A Storm in the Rocky Mountains*, painting by Albert Bierstadt, 1866. Wikimedia / Brooklyn Museum

But the key role played by Alexandre Calame and his teacher François Diday in inventing a theatrically exaggerated view of the Alps in the 19th century was the culmination of a centuries-long process. Artistic depictions of the Alps already existed in the late Middle Ages. For example, if we look closely, we can recognise snow-capped mountain ranges in the detailed altarpieces by 15th century Dutch painters such as Rogier van der Weyden and Geertgen tot sint Jans. However, they remain a topographically vague backdrop as art at the time still revolved around the biblical theme.

**Geertgen tot Sint Jans's small homage to the Alps can be seen in the background on the left. The picture was painted between 1475 and 1480.** Musée du Louvre

The painter Konrad Witz, active mainly in Basel, broke this mould. He painted a four-panelled altarpiece (polyptych) for Geneva’s St. Peter’s Cathedral in 1444, in which he combined scenes from the Bible with local landscapes. Particularly famous is The Miraculous Draft of Fishes, which places the biblical story of Peter the fisherman in contemporary Geneva. In the background we can make out a mountain range with an – albeit slightly condensed – Mont Blanc. It was unusual for altarpieces to feature such dominant depictions of landscapes at that time. Witz’s altarpiece disappeared in 1535 during the Protestant iconoclasm of the Cathedral. It was damaged and was not exhibited again until the anniversary of the Reformation in 1835, having been provisionally restored.

The mountains as a backdrop. Konrad Witz’s work The Miraculous Draft of Fishes with Mont Blanc in the background, 1444. — **The mountains as a backdrop. Konrad Witz’s work *The Miraculous Draft of Fishes* with Mont Blanc in the background, 1444.** Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva

When it reappeared, Diday and Calame extolled nature as the actual theme of the painting, disregarding the direct religious reference. Ultimately, understanding of art had changed a great deal in the intervening 400 years. Yet the religious reference is not as absent as it may seem. Because monumental landscape paintings are about nature as an overwhelming force, in which humans experience the sublime in the medium of art and reflect on their place in the universe. After the religious critics of the Enlightenment dismissed the idea of God, a void was left. The subsequent Romantics attempted to fill this void by linking religious sentiment with subjective perception, particularly of nature. Romanticism also sought to develop socially-accepted ideals of what was considered ‘admirable, ‘sublime’, ‘beautiful’, ‘macabre’ and even ‘patriotic’.

**Portrait of Alexandre Calame, circa 1850.** Wikimedia

**Portrait photo of a painter: François Diday, taken in 1868.** Wikimedia / Bibliothèque de Genève

A shift in the perception of nature, which had been in the making since the Renaissance, therefore culminated in works like Calame’s. Humans started to appropriate and reconstruct nature. This was often motivated by economic concerns, which encouraged a growing scientific interest in the principles and processes of nature. And art diligently kept pace. While depictions of religious or historical themes remained the most prestigious in the strictly-regulated art academies until well into the 19th century, genre painting – to which landscape painting belongs – increasingly flourished.

Calame’s works were initially described as ‘realist’. However, it quickly becomes clear that his storm is in fact a carefully constructed and orchestrated depiction that is calculated down to the minutest detail. Besides the format, which draws us into the picture, this is mainly due to the perspective we are given as privileged observers. Because we have a front-row seat at the heart of the action, on the edge of the torrent. Did the artist really set up his easel here? He is the invisible yet real hero of this story because we are led to think that he endured the most adverse conditions to satisfy our viewing pleasure. But alongside the adverse weather conditions, the unwieldy format of the work destroys the illusion of open air painting with which Calame tries to fool us.

**You have to look closely to appreciate Calame’s sophisticated view of reality.** Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva

There are also inconsistencies in the lighting. Part of what makes the scene so dramatic is the bright light coming from the right-hand side, which illuminates the spray, the symbolic solitary rock in the middle of the stream, the bank, and the uprooted fir tree and copse, highlighting them as painted master strokes. But the lighting in the bottom part of the painting does not entirely match the area in the top right that is lit from behind. This lends the painting an almost sinister depth and makes the wafts of mist stand out against the rock face, once again highlighting the artist’s virtuosity.

In fact, Calame’s Storm on Handeck was painted in the studio. On his annual summer excursions to the mountains, Calame would fill his sketchbooks with drawings, which would serve as a basis for his paintings. He is unlikely to have been familiar with the slightly earlier and bolder works of a certain J.M.W. Turner, such as the painting of an avalanche (first exhibited in 1810), or the painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps, as Turner only became known internationally during the Impressionist period.

**Turner’s depiction of an avalanche in the Grisons, circa 1810.** Wikimedia

We now know about the close interplay of Alpine painting and the emerging Alpine photography, with the development of the Alps as a tourist destination (the first Baedeker travel guide on Switzerland was published in 1844). Tourism led to growing demand for all types of ‘souvenir pictures’, which in turn further fuelled it, as they served as an advertisement for visiting Switzerland.

**A mountain climber on the Mont Blanc glacier. Stereoscopic images, circa 1860.** Swiss National Museum

Calame’s original paintings were not handy souvenirs that anyone could pick up – unlike their commercial reproductions in the form of lithographs and etchings. His painting Lake Lucerne was bought in 1855 by Napoleon III. A little earlier, the Bernese government had snapped one up, too, purchasing Calame’s View taken at the Handeck in 1836. The justification was original and tells us something about the role of art in the emerging Swiss national sentiment: the mountain view was meant to serve as a model for young painters. The idea was that they should move away from the motif of the Italian landscape, which was fashionable at the time, and devote themselves instead to Swiss landscapes. From today’s perspective, that seems like public money very well spent. Because few artists have been as instrumental as Alexandre Calame in shaping the international perception of the Swiss Alps as a stunning and unique natural spectacle, and therefore promoting tourism to the country.

More of: Modern Age Tourism Nature Art Article

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