- Alexandre Calame
Alexandre Calame (
May 28 ,1810 –March 19 ,1864 ), was a Swiss painter.He was born in Arabie, at the time belonging to
Corsier-sur-Vevey , today a part ofVevey . He was the son of a skillful marble worker in Vevey, but because his father lost the family fortune, Calame could not concentrate on art, but rather he was forced to work in a bank from the age of 15. When his father fell from a building and then died, it was up to the young Calame to provide for his mother.In his spare time he began to practice drawing small views of Switzerland. In 1829 he met his patron, the banker Diodati, who made it possible for him to study under landscape painter
François Diday . After a few months he decided to devote himself fully to art.In 1835 he began exhibiting his Swiss-Alps and forest paintings in
Paris andBerlin . He became quite well known, especially inGermany , although Calame was more a drawer than an illustrator. In 1842 he went to Paris and displayed his works "Mont Blanc ", the "Jungfrau ", the "Brienzersee ", the "Monte Rosa " and "Mont Cervin".He went to
Italy in 1844 and brought back fromRome andNaples countless paintings, among them one of the ruins ofPaestum (in the city museum inLeipzig ). He showed that he was capable of understanding Italian nature; but the Alps remained his speciality.The
glaciers , emerald-green, white foaming mountain water, which split the trees during the storm, and the whipped clouds, the multi-colored rocks, half masked from fog, in the rays of the gleaming sun, are those things, which he knew to be true to nature. We still call them the "Handeckfall" fromBernese upper country , inTirol ,Lake Lucerne , the forest tower (in the urban museum of Leipzig), the forest stream (Dresdener gallery) etc.One of his most ingenious works is the representation of the four seasons and times of the day in four landscapes, a spring morning in the south, a summer midday in the Nordic flatlands, an Autumn evening, and a winter night on a mountain. He became popular with these large works, and his popularity grew with smaller pieces and lithographies, namely 18 studies of
Lauterbrunnen andMeiringen and the 24 sheets of Alpine passes. These were widespread inFrance ,England , and Germany and are still today used to teach this style of painting.He died in
Menton .An exhibition featuring more than thirty of Calame's paintings was held at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in
Williamstown, Massachusetts in 2006.elected works
* "Blick von Petit Saconnex auf Genf und den Montblanc", 1834, Leinwand, 31×44 cm. (Winterthur, Stiftung Oskar Reinhart)
* "Die Tempelruinen von Paestum", 1847, Leinwand, 195×260 cm.(Leipzig, Museum of Art)External links
*HDS|21996
*SIKART|4000036
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