May- August 5, 2007
Alexandre Calame (1810-1864), who was born in Switzerland and grew up near Lake Geneva, was the leading painter of Swiss landscapes in the nineteenth century. His paintings of the Swiss landscape are remarkably naturalistic depictions of lakes, high peaks, and rushing waterfalls; at the same time, however, he considered them meditations on the theme of nature and the divine. This exhibition presents more than fifty paintings, sketches, and prints by Calame and his contemporaries and followers, including Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer, François Diday, Barthélemy Menn, Johann Gottfried Steffan, and Robert Zünd. All of the works in the exhibition are from the extensive collection of Asbjorn R. Lunde. Alpine Views has been organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; presentation at the Benton is made possible, in part, by its members.
Swiss landscape painting before Calame was dominated by a picturesque vision of an idyllic countryside. The painter Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer wrote of his appreciation of Switzerland's mountains; rather than focus on these mountains, however, he often produced small-scale scenes of rural life. Caspar Wolf, the foremost eighteenth-century Swiss landscape painter, was influenced by the theories of the Enlightenment; his paintings combine topographical accuracy with an idealized ordering of nature, and his work was greatly admired by many later artists, including Calame.
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