The Matterhorn, the Breithorn, the Rhone Glacier, Mont Blanc: the Alpine landscape is one of the major themes in Vallotton’s xylographic work. In 1892, he engraved a series of six plates which, influenced by Japanese prints, show a remarkable economy of means, surprising framing and a beautiful expressiveness of line to evoke the mineral and glacial convulsions of the Alps.
Vallotton painted these High Alps in July 1919 from the ocean shores of Honfleur. In other words, the painter was not looking at his subject, but reinventing it from memory and imagination. There is nothing topographical about this astonishing composition, seen as the crow flies, as if overflown by a drone. In shades of blue and brown, the artist paints the almost organic creeping movement of this fictitious, archetypal glacier, like a sparkling flow of turquoise lava whose advance we can almost feel, just as our modern-day glaciers are constantly retreating.

Born in Lausanne, but French by adoption, Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) took part in the revival of wood engraving in 1890, which brought him international fame. He joined the Nabis group. His marriage to the daughter of art dealer Alexandre Bernheim marked a turning point in his career. From then on, he devoted himself to painting, developing his unique and unclassifiable style.

Félix Vallotton, High Alps, glaciers and snowy peaks, 1919, oil on canvas, 73 x 100 cm, Gottfried Keller Foundation, Federal Office of Culture, Bern, 1978. Kunsthaus Zurich