ALEXANDRE CALAME (SWISS 1810-1864)THE HASLI, CANTON OF BERNEOil on canvas Signed and inscribed `Genève' (lower right) 78 x 110cm (30½ x 43¼ in.)Provenance:Carl von MetzlerN. Koch, (St. Georges)This outstanding view of the Hasli captures both the distant panorama of alpine peaks and the torrents and tall pines so beloved of Calame. It is a work of his maturity which may be dated to the mid-1840's. A closely related subject is known only from a lithograph. This was painted in 1844 for M. de Gilles, tutor to the heir to the Russian Imperial throne, (see V. Anker, Calame, Sa Vie et Oeuvre, Fribourg, 1987, p. 363, no. 245). The lithographed subject differs from the present painting in the height of the painter's viewpoint, the central tree which has been stripped bare by storms and the general arrangement of the right hand side of the composition. The Hasli is a large and fertile valley in the Bernese Oberland, surrounded by some of the steepest mountains in the Alps, in which the rivers Aar and Reichenbach rise.The leading Swiss landscape painter of the mid-nineteenth century, Calame also travelled extensively outside Switzerland. His most important works depict the drama of his native landscape in all its moods, from violent storms and shattering trees to the idyllic calm of a fine evening as in the present painting. His work is particularly well represented in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Geneva, with a series of enormous landscapes of the region; his drawings and paintings have been widely appreciated outside Switzerland.