Oil painting, 'Lake of the Four Cantons', Alexander Calame, Swiss school, 1852

A calm lake in the mid distance surrounded by summits covered with patches of snow, under a cloudy sky; in the foreground is a small male figure perched on top of a rock among tall trees.

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend

Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, listed in the 1868 post-mortem register of the contents of his London house (V&A R/F MA/1/T1181) and displayed in the staircase as an 'Oil on Canvas. The lake of the four cantons (Lucerne), near Brunnen, in the canton of Schwytz. By A. Calame. In frame. Signed. Swiss. Present century'; bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, 1868.

Historical significance: This painting belongs to a series of different views of the Lac des Quatre Cantons executed between 1850 and 1858, which includes the following paintings:
- Museo cantonale d'arte, Lugano, dated 1852-58,
- Museum zu allerheiligen, Schaffhausen dated 1854-57 ;
- Abbeg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, dated 1855;
- in the Hermitage, St Petersburg dated 1850;
- Musée d'art et d'histoire, Genève, datred 1848-52;
and Musée d'art et d'histoire, Neufchâtel, dated 1851, which is particularly close to the V&A version.
This series may have been particularly popular to judge by the number of versions Calame produced. This success was epitomised by Napoleon III's acquisition of one of them at Exposition universelle of Paris in 1855.
As a fervent Calvinist, Calame used the scenery of the Alps and other mountains to convey the grandiose forces of nature through the depiction of stormy summits and torrents as well as calm and serene lake scenes. This aesthetic is not far from that of the Romantic movement and its use of nature as a mirror of the human and divine mind. The small figure in the foreground, perched on the top of rock is representative of such conception of an overwhelming and omnipotent nature against human fragility.
This painting was bequeathed by the Rev. Townshend who owned a large collection of 19th-century landscape paintings. Townshend, who resided part of the year in Lausanne, acquired this painting directly from the artist.

The term 'Biedermeier' refers to bourgeois life and art in Germanic Europe, an extensive area embracing such cities as Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna and Prague, from 1815 (the Congress of Vienna) to the revolutions of 1848. Biedermeier painters were ideologically opposed to academic and religious painting and favoured such subject matter as portraits, landscapes and genre scenes, with still-lifes, especially of flowers. They share a similar technique in the use of separate, clear tones and a high degree of finish, reminiscent of Neo-Classicism while they tend to convey a greater sentimentality. By the 1880s, the influence of this artistic movement was on the wane and was even used pejoratively to characterize the reactionary bourgeois elements in society, which remained quite indifferent to social problems and cultivated a sense of order and sobriety, especially in the private sphere and the domestic realm.

Alexandre Calame (1810-1864) was born in Vevey but stidued in Geneva under François Diday and then travelled in Northern Europe and Italy until 1850. He soon specialised in mountain paintings especially the Alps, the Bernese Oberland and central Switzerland. He was also a prolific draughtsman and engraver. He died relatively young in Menton, France.

This painting is a fine example of Calame's mountainous landscapes. The present composition combines one of Calame's greatest successes, the depiction of idyllic lake scene (here Lake Lucerne), with the representation of the Alps, which appears to be the main thematic of his oeuvre. Although Calame extensively drew after nature, this painting was probably executed in his studio after sketches that he brought back from his trips in the Alps.

1554-1869