Neal Auction Winter Estates January 2015

W denotes the lot is illustrated at www.nealauction.com 21 77. Charles Euphrasie Kuwasseg (French, 1838-1904) , “An Artist Sketching the Matterhorn, beside the Headwaters of the River Marmore”, 1893, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 51 1/4 in. x 38 1/2 in., massive original giltwood and gesso exhibition frame. $8000/12000 Note: The picture offered here is one of the largest, most successful and important of this popular 19 th - c. artist’s paintings. Kuwasseg is best known for his multitude of small views along French, Netherlandish, and Italian coasts and coastal rivers. With its soaring height exceeding 51 in. (over 1.3 highest in all that noble chain. The remote Alpine farm that provides a backdrop to the sketching artist and herdsman is thus at the very crest of the Pennine Alps, in addition to being placed almost squarely on the international border between the Val d’Aosta, above Torino, and the Swiss canton of the Valais. Kuwasseg reached this unforgettable vantage just over a quarter-century after the Matterhorn was first scaled, on July 14, 1865, by the young British artist Edward Whymper (1840-1911). meters), Kuwasseg’s pictorial achievement offered here is not only to give the Matterhorn the breathtaking scope its landscape demands, but also to afford this fabled peak the immense expanse of space and sky that it so memorably dominates. While the figure of the sketching artist, observed by a shepherd in this painting, might suggest a self- portrait, Kuwasseg’s own more expansive view in this picture is taken from slightly farther down the Alpine torrent that shapes the Val Tournanche, above the Italian town of Breuil. The view is thus from the southwest. The famous village of Zermatt, in Switzerland, lies just over the pass (seen here in the middle distance) of the Pennine Alps, the 77