09.29.2021-10.30.2021
Mountains – Contrasts
For this autumn 2021 edition of Art en Vieille-Ville, the Galerie Grand-Rue presents mountain photographs dating from the last quarter of the 19th century and contrasts them against engravings, watercolours and gouaches of the same subjects from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The attraction for Switzerland and the Alps intensified at the end of the 18th century and tourists wished to bring back souvenirs of the landscapes and natural curiosities they observed. The engravings, watercolours and gouaches produced by local and foreign artists were collected by these enthusiastic travellers and provide us today with precious testimonies of the appearance of glaciers and mountain villages. With the arrival of photography and its development in the second half of the 19th century, the public's interest in these new representations of nature blossomed. The photographic company founded in Alsace in the middle of the century by Adolphe Braun (1812-1877) met with great success, particularly regarding its use of charcoal prints, an unalterable photographic process invented in 1855 by Alphonse Poitevin (1819-1882) and patented in 1864 by Joseph Swan (1828-1914).
You will be able to admire a beautiful series of photographic prints from Maison Braun together with coloured engravings by Johann Ludwig Bleuler (1792-1850), Jean Antoine Linck (1766-1843), Jean Philippe Linck (1770-1812) and Marquard Wocher (1760-1830), aquatints by George Baxter (1804-1867) and Johann Peter Lamy (active 1791-1839) and a veritable smorgasbord of other drawings, gouaches and watercolours.
Image
Jean Antoine LINCK (1766-1843)
Vue prise de la Voute nommée le Chapeau, du Glacier des Bois, et des Aiguilles du Charmoz
Gravure aquarellée, 35,3 x 48,2 cm