Calame Alexandre is a Swiss draftsman, engraver aquafortist, and lithograph, one of the most popular landscape painters of the late romanticism of the middle part of the 19th century.  He was the son of a marble worker and he worked in a bank from the age of 15. He began to practice drawing at a very young age.  In 1829, with the financial support of his employer the banker Diodati, he started studying painting under landscape painter François Diday. With Alexandre Calame, the world began to speak about the “Alpine landscape school”. He developed a new manner of landscape painting, comparing the classical paysage of the 17th century. Calame “constructed” all his landscapes in his studio, but they always kept naturalness and a real breath of life thanks to wonderful preparative studies made from nature.

The Alpine Landscape of the Museum collection demonstrates the art of Alexandre Calame. It is a romantic view with a water surface, surrounded by woods and mountains, and a tiny human figure emphasizing the smallness of a human being against the huge grandeur of nature.