GUSTAVE DORÉ
French, 1832 - 1883
Paysage des Alpes
Signed G. Doré
Oil on canvas
51¼ x 77 inches (130 x 195.5 cm)
Painted circa 1879. Gustave Doré’s profound interest in Alpine landscapes began during his first visit to Switzerland in 1853 and continued for the rest of his life. As William Hauptman notes, Doré was awed by “the sensation of the infinite, the ‘magique et grandiose spectacles qu'il soit donner’ … Doré frequently applied a pictorial formula that he repeats in variations in his Swiss oils, where snowy peaks are seen in the background, while the foreground space is devoted to high hills with large fir trees, as in this composition… There is a hint of the mystical feelings Doré frequently expressed in his Swiss correspondence, particularly in the Friedrich-like sense of total solitude, broken only by the pinpoint flight of the bird silhouetted against the mountain base” (Hauptman, ed., Magnificent Switzerland, p. 212).
Provenance
Private Collection
Frans Buffa & Zonen, Amsterdam
Galerie Nathan, Zurich, by 1991
Sale, Christie’s, London, June 14, 2006, lot 166, illustrated
Private Collection, Springfield, Massachusetts (acquired at the above sale)
Exhibited
Lugano, Switzerland, Fondazione Thyssen-Bornemisza; and Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Magnificent Switzerland: Views by Foreign Artists 1770-1914 [William Hauptman, ed.], 1991-92, pp. 212-3, no. 83, illustrated
$95,000