JOHN MITCHELL FINE PAINTINGS EST 1931 3 Burger Calame Castan Compton 16, 29 14 6 10, 12, 23, 44, 46, 51 Contencin Crauwels Gay-Couttet Français 17, 18, 20, 22, 28, 46, 50 32 33 39 Gyger Hart-Dyke Loppé Mähly 17, 49, 51 26, 27 30, 34, 40, 43, 52 38 All paintings, drawings and photographs are for sale unless otherwise stated and are available for viewing from Monday to Friday by prior appointment at: John Mitchell Fine Paintings 17 Avery Row Brook Street Mazel Millner Roffiaen Rummelspacher London W1K 4BF 15 45 24 11 Catalogue compiled by William Mitchell Please contact William Mitchell on 020 7493 7567 [email protected] www.johnmitchell.net Schrader Steffan Tairraz Yoshida 9 48 8, 11, 19 47 4 This catalogue has been compiled to accompany our annual selling exhibition of paintings, Club’s annual exhibitions from the late 1860s onwards, there was an active promotion and 5 drawings and vintage photographs of the Alps from the early 1840s to the present day. It is the veneration of the Alps through all mediums of art, as artists tried to conjure up visions of snow firm’s eighteenth winter of Peaks & Glaciers , and, as the leading specialist in Alpine pictures, I am and ice – in Loppé’s words ‘a reality that was more beautiful than in our wildest dreams.’ With an proud to have handled some wonderful examples since our inaugural exhibition in 2001. In keeping increasingly interested audience, it is no surprise that by the end of the nineteenth century, the with every exhibition, the quality, topographical accuracy and diversity of subject matter remain demand for Alpine imagery far outstripped the supply. This helps explain the baffling quantity of the overriding priorities even if the finest paintings in the genre are becoming harder to source. indifferent oil paintings of the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau and so forth still to be found Where possible, I curate to the best of my ability the work of the aptly-named peintres-alpinistes . today. In short, the story of the discovery and documenting of the Alps is still being written, and Although they were often accomplished climbers or had the soul and stamina of mountaineers, through pictures – both old and more recent – our knowledge continues to evolve and broaden. these were, first and foremost, professional painters. In their search for dramatic landscapes they were drawn ever higher up on to the glaciers and mountains. The true peintres-alpinistes , In mid-September last year I climbed the Schreckhorn (4078m) in the Bernese Oberland together such as Gabriel Loppé, the Comptons, père et fils , and Contencin, to name but a few, embody the with three friends <FIG. 1= We set off from the hut soon after 2.30am. An hour later the still night air best of their school of painting. It is no surprise that, year in year out, their pictures are consistently began roaring with the sound of a large avalanche across the valley and in the darkness all I could the most sought after and it goes without saying how encouraged I am by the significant rise in focus on was how long the rumbling lasted. Later on, as the sun came up, it was clear that an auction prices for their finest paintings. Free from art market hype and investment speculation, entire gallery of seracs had given way below the Fiescherhorn’s lower slopes. The avalanche was these Alpine scenes offer a rewarding and, above all, highly enjoyable way to collect art. indeed serious and one that will change the view onto the Ischmeer Glacier for many years to come. However, thinking back on it later that week, I was more concerned by the fact that when In May 2018 we published the first extensive monograph in English on Gabriel Loppé, and further we stopped soon after the event to put on crampons I was only wearing a T-shirt, such was the details of the book and how to order it have been inserted into this catalogue. The project was a warmth that night. Undeniably, the illustrations here offer irrevocable proof of retreating glaciers long-held ambition of mine and one of the most rewarding aspects of writing the book was the and the changing appearance of what were once tiny hamlets and empty valleys. I refer to this opportunity it gave me to research in much further detail not only the ‘golden age’ of aspect in the brief picture captions since at the time when these wild landscapes began to mountaineering in the middle of the nineteenth century but its development in the ensuing fascinate outsiders, a period known as the ‘Little Ice Age’ was coming to an end. In the 1850s decades into the early 1900s. It reminded me of how the concept of the Alps as coined in Leslie there was a sudden dramatic advance by the glaciers and nowadays the pictures in our Peaks & Stephen’s seminal book, The Playground of Europe , would have had a completely different legacy Glaciers exhibitions offer a stark comparison. It is sobering to think how many mini ice ages there without the involvement of the Alpine Club, the oldest mountaineering association in the world. must have been over tens of millennia, how cyclical all these cooling and warming periods are. In Indeed, our 2001 loan exhibition with highlights from the Club’s picture collection contributed the current melting phase Chamonix’s once giant Mer de Glace glacier is losing an average of 35 more than I could have hoped to this area of collecting. From its inception in 1857 the Club offered metres per year and few people could reject which epoch we are now experiencing. The whole a gateway to ‘organized’ adventure and emancipation for the city-bound spirit. Through the Alpine process may reverse, but not in our lifetimes. Nonetheless, there appears to be no end of specialist property agencies advertising fashionable Alpine homes, and the Alps as both a summer and winter destination remain as appealing as they were in the mid-nineteenth century. Even for tourists with a limited understanding of the environmental impact caused by construction, deforestation and the costly infrastructure required for winter sports, the changes as mentioned above are hard to ignore. In many cases, they are man-made but our enthusiasm for these mountains and their valleys endures. Whichever memory or moment these pictures evoke for our clientèle; a view from a favourite mountain village; a particular scene remembered out walking, a day’s climbing, skiing or ski-touring; it is their great variety in period, season and, above all, style that make for an enjoyable and interesting field of collecting and one that has not only grown in value but one that reaches an ever-wider audience of both active and aspiring collectors. My greatest wish is that these paintings may bring readers the same pleasure that I derive from re-discovering and cataloguing them. WJ Mitchell January 2019 FIG 1 Climbers on the Schreckhorn at dawn with the Finsteraarhorn in the background. September Please note that there are more paintings, drawings and photographs for sale that are not included in this 2018. Cataloguer’s catalogue but can be accessed via our website under the section Alpine which is sub-divided into two sections: photograph. paintings and photographs. 6 Only a handful of glacier scenes exist by 7 this classically trained Swiss painter, academician and printmaker. This fine study, made in oils on paper en plein air , is as fascinating as it is rare. Born in Geneva, Castan was a direct contemporary of Gabriel Loppé when they were both students of Alexandre Calame between 1844 and 1846. After an apprenticeship with Rodolphe Töpffer in Geneva, Castan travelled to Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland to study landscape with Calame. Castan’s friendship with Loppé lasted beyond those two summers and, in all likelihood, it was Loppé who took him up to the Grands Mulets to paint this scene. Having established himself as a regular participant at the Paris Salon between 1855 and 1882 Castan became a successful landscape painter inspired by Corot and Daubigny and is better known today for his views of the Normandy coastline. Indeed, there are no Salon records of any similar high Alpine scenes by him and this painting was surely done as a record of his expedition to the flanks of Mont Blanc. The spidery figures were perhaps a later addition by the painter even if their scale is in proportion to their surrounding glaciers and crevasses. Gustave Eugène Castan (1823-1892) Climbers ascending Mont Blanc via the Grands Mulets Glacier, Chamonix, France oil on paper laid on canvas 15 x 22½in (38 x 57cm) signed, circa 1885 A 8 Pierre Tairraz (1933-2000) Franz Schrader (1844-1924) 9 The Aiguille du Dru, Chamonix, France The Aiguille du Midi and Mont Blanc seen from the north, France silver gelatin print pastel 15¾ x 12in (40 x 30cm) 13¾ x 19¾in (35 x 50cm) stamped on verso signed B-- C Of Prussian origin, Schrader was a mountaineer, explorer, cartographer and gifted painter who made an important contribution to the mapping of the Pyrenees. As a true peintre- alpiniste , this delicate pastel of the Mont Blanc Massif marks his debut in our Peaks & Glaciers exhibitions and Schrader’s work is all the more relevant to this exhibition as he is acknowledged as founder of the Société des peintres de montagne . On November 25, 1897, as vice-president of the French Alpine Club, he held a conference at the club to establish an aesthetic credo of the mountain and announced the imminent formation of a French guild of mountain painters.