Alexandre Calame (1810 – 1864)

View of Lake Geneva

Oil on wood, 1849
67 x 86 cm
Villa Vauban – Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg
Collection Jean - Pierre Pescatore

Before Swiss artist Alexandre Calame pursued his vocation as a painter, he worked in banking. While drawing was initially a leisure pursuit, he decided at the age of 19 to travel to Geneva to start an apprenticeship with landscape painter François Diday. Drawing inspiration from his homeland, Calame created mostly landscape paintings and drawings featuring mountains and forests, with which he quickly gained international recognition. After about 1835, he spent every summer painting in the Alps.
In 1837 he held his first exhibition at the Salon de Paris, after which he also found international buyers for his works. Then as now, viewers are drawn in particular to the peace and harmony that pervade his rambling landscapes. The timeless beauty of nature stands in contrast to the hectic comings and goings of the big cities and an everyday life characterised by fast change. In this painting, Calame embellishes the actual existing landscape of Lake Geneva with conceived elements and in doing so creates a stage-like setting. The lake stretches up to the high mountain range, which appears to be partly dissolving in the light and gives the composition a quiet majesty. Stylistically, Calame not only followed the Dutch landscape painting of the Golden Age, especially Jacob van Ruisdael ; he was also closely linked to the art movements of his time and was an admirer of the Düsseldorf School of Painting.

Isidore Dagnan (1794 – 1873)

Oil on canvas, before 1847 Villa Vauban – Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg Collection Jean - Pierre Pescatore French painter Isidore Dagnan specialised in large - format atmospheric 17 landscape paintings. Dagnan hailed from Marseille and, after completing his apprenticeship, settled in Paris, where he regularly exhibited his works in the Salon de Paris. The subjects for his works usually came from his region of southern France or from Switzerland, as evidenced in the two works on display. The view of the Pont Saint - Bénézet of Avignon is part of a group of works in which Dagnan captured the southern French town from several angles. The centre of the image is taken up by the four surviving arches of the bridge with the papal palace visible in the background to the left. An unusual feature of this painting is the viewer angle north of the bridge. This close - up view makes the viewer feel as though he is in one of the fishing boats on the Rhône, as depicted in the foreground. The other painting illustrates a view of Lake Geneva, striking in its use of saturated colours, a characteristic feature of Dagnan’s. A market scene is depicted on the left, unfolding in front of an imposing Neoclassical building. To the light, multi - storey dwellings can be seen, fronted by lower older houses and barns on the lakefront, some of which are erected on wooden stilts surrounded by water. In the foreground to the right, fishermen pull their nets out of the water, while a boat approaches from the lake. Typical of Dagnan’s landscapes is the warm - toned incidence of light, especially at sunrise or sunset, as well as an expert depiction of water surfaces, showcasing the impact of the light to full effect.

Huile sur toile, avant 1847
86,5 x 121 cm
Villa Vauban – Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg
Collection Jean - Pierre Pescatore

Le peintre français Isidore Dagnan était un spécialiste des paysages d’atmosphère de grand format. Originaire de Marseille, il s’est, après sa formation, établi à Paris, exposant régulièrement au Salon. Ses tableaux lui étaient généralement inspirés par sa région d’origine, le sud de la France, et la Suisse, ce que ces deux oeuvres confirment par ailleurs. La vue du Pont Saint - Bénézet d’Avignon fait partie d’un ensemble de toiles à travers lesquelles Dagnan a représenté cette ville du sud de la France sous
différents angles. Le centre du tableau est occupé par les quatre arches du pont encore conservées ; à l’arrière - plan, on aperçoit, sur le bord gauche, le Palais des Papes. La perspective de l’observateur, au nord du pont, est inhabituelle. Du fait de l’impression de proximité, il semblerait qu’on ait soi - même pris place sur l’un des bateaux de pêcheurs naviguant sur le Rhône, au premier plan. Le second tableau est une vue du Lac Léman qui séduit par l’intensité des coloris caractéristique de Dagnan. À gauche, une
scène de marché se déroule devant un remarquable bâtiment classiciste.
À l’extrémité droite du tableau, on aperçoit des immeubles d’habitation de plusieurs étages devant lesquels se trouvent, en direction du lac, des maisons ainsi que des granges plus basses et plus anciennes, en partie construites sur des pilotis en bois. Au premier plan, à droite, des pêcheurs remontent leurs filets alors que s’approche un bateau venant du lac. La luminosité des tons chauds, principalement au lever et au coucher du soleil, ainsi que la représentation toute en virtuosité de la surface de l’eau
afin de mettre en valeur, avec le plus d’éclat possible, les effets de lumière, sont typiques des paysages de Dagnan.

Eugène - Joseph Verboeckhoven (1799 – 1881)

Sheep in the meadow

Huile sur bois, 1848
17 x 22 cm
Villa Vauban – Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg
Collection Léon Lippmann

Belgian painter Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven maintained a large studio in Brussels, where he created mostly animal portraits. His Belgian
landscapes featuring cows, sheep and donkeys proved particularly popular with the public due to their meticulous and lovingly detailed
execution. The painter at times gave the animals almost human features and was known to be an outstanding expert on the anatomy of grazers. In terms of composition, his paintings intentionally followed the tradition
of the 17th century in both subject choice and technical execution. For the blue colour of the sky, for instance, Verboeckhoven used lapis lazuli pigment, like the Old Masters before him. In Dutch Golden Age painting, the best-known representatives of this genre of landscape
painting featuring groups of animals included Paulus Potter, Willem Romeyn and Nicholas Berchem. Verboeckhoven studied their works very
closely during his apprenticeship, even copying some of them. Verboeckhoven
was a very prolific artist ; nevertheless critics reproached him for constantly replicating the same subjects. From the 1850s onwards, interest
in these idyllic landscape depictions with animals slowly waned and, as a result of the increasing popularity of sociocritical realistic
depictions, they gradually faded into the background.

Jan van de Cappelle (1624 – 1679)

Calm sea

Oil on canvas, 17th century
77 x 98 cm
Villa Vauban – Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg
Collection Jean-Pierre Pescatore

Despite his oeuvre comprising only 150 known works, Jan van de Cappelle is considered a significant marine painter of the 17th century.
Based in Amsterdam, Cappelle’s main occupation was as a dyeing master in the family business. He devoted himself to painting only in his spare time. He sold many of his works in Great Britain, which explains why he was virtually unknown among his Dutch contemporaries. Since Cappelle was a very wealthy businessman, he was also able to amass
a vast art collection, which comprised around 200 paintings and over 700 drawings by Dutch and Flemish artists. Together with his wife, Cappelle also had his portrait painted by various artists, with whom he presumably maintained friendly contact, such as Rembrandt van Rijn and Frans Hals. Cappelle created mostly marine paintings and winter landscapes. His works are characterised by a masterful rendition of dramatic cloud formations as well as a skilful reproduction of light reflections on the water surface. Clouds were a common fixture of Dutch landscape painting of the Golden Age, often depicted as dramatic elements soaring above a low - lying horizon or else included for purely aesthetic reasons. Despite this seemingly meticulous rendition, the sky in this work was artistically staged. Painters were also known for repeating
particularly striking cloud formations throughout several of their works.

Guillaume Bodinier (1795 – 1872)

Young Neapolitans (Girls from Procida)

Oil on canvas, 1835
Villa Vauban – Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg
Collection Jean - Pierre Pescatore

Guillaume Bodinier grew up in Angers. His artistic apprenticeship took
him to Paris, where he later worked alongside Eugène Delacroix and
Théodore Géricault in the studio of painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. The
1820s and 1830s were characterised by trips to Italy, where he spent
a longer period of time at the Villa Medici, a branch of the Académie
royale de France. In 1848 he returned to Angers for good, where he was
appointed honorary director of the museum. During the first half of the 19th century, the art of painting was pervaded by numerous aesthetic
movements, making it difficult for many artists to find their own style.
This explains why Bodinier’s works are positioned between Neoclassicism,
Romanticism and Realism. His love for Italy left a distinct mark on his works. He was particularly interested in the physical appearance of
the rural population, which he regularly depicted in an idealised manner.
He intentionally sought out models so as to study facial features,
clothing and even hairstyles as closely as possible. He recorded these with an almost ethnological and scientific zeal in countless sketches, which later served as templates for paintings. In this painting, he portrayed two young girls in front of a view of the landscape surrounding Naples. They stare directly at the viewer with a melancholic expression on their faces.

Jacob Simon Hendrik (dit Hein) Kever (1854 – 1922)

Young peasant watching a child

Oil on canvas, 1873
Villa Vauban – Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg
Collection Léon Lippmann

One of the tendencies of 19 th - century art was that of the romanticising painting, which for some artists provided a way of addressing the societal changes of their day. In contrast to Neoclassicism and the subsequently
emerging Realism movement, the focus was much more on the individuals’ emotional world. Popular subjects included scenes from rural family life, expressing a longing for security and stability. Artists were less concerned with the idea of realistic representation ; the reality was instead embellished with paintings being “ enhanced ”, i.e. idealised.
A representative of this art movement was Jacobus Kever, who predominantly
painted young mothers with their children. His talent was particularly apparent in his psychologically differentiated depiction of close family ties. His paintings enjoyed great popularity with American patrons in particular.