#FineArtFriday: The Sycamores by Alexandre Calame 1854

Title: The Sycamores by Alexandre Calame

Genre: landscape art

Date: 1854

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 54.3 cm (21.3 in)

Collection: Cincinnati Art Museum

What I love about this painting:

These are trees with a presence. They grow on a rocky, sunlit hillside and seem as tough as the boulders surrounding them. Like people, these trees have seen some stuff. No delicate hothouse specimens here – these are hardy peasant trees, able to make do with whatever nature throws at them.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Alexandre Calame (28 May 1810 – 19 March 1864) was a Swiss landscape painter, associated with the Düsseldorf School.

He was born in Arabie at the time belonging to Corsier-sur-Vevey, today a part of Vevey. 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 and Berlin. He became quite well known, especially in Germany, although Calame was more a drawer than an illustrator. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. In 1842 he went to Paris and displayed his works Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, the Brienzersee, the Monte Rosa and Mont Cervin.