Joseph Jansen ( 1829 - 1905 )

The Mont Blanc massif seen from St.-Martin-Sallanches, Savoie, France


The Mont Blanc massif seen from St.-Martin-Sallanches, Savoie, France


oil on canvas,
139.5 x 188cm.
signed

item sold

As a traditional landscape painter Jansen was an archetypical product of the Düsseldorf School of painting but also one of the more successful ones. Although Jansen was born in Aachen, by the age of 17 he was enrolled in Germany’s leading school of landscape painting which had developed in the wake of the German Romantic movement.

Like his now better-known contemporaries such as Andreas Achenbach, Carl Friedrich Lessing, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, and Albert Bierstadt, Jansen was drawn to the Alps from an early age. With the emphasis on fine detail and pictorial accuracy, the Düsseldorf landscapists tended to have a more subdued palette which was ideally suited to painting large format pictures such as this imposing panorama of St.-Martinsur-Arve near Sallanches. In this instance the shadowy riverbed is in sharp contrast with the vast west face of Mont Blanc and its sentinel peaks bathed in such strong sunlight.

The historic stone bridge has spanned the Arve since 1783 and has recently been saved from ruin thanks to a restoration project undertaken by the Haute-Savoie.

Joseph Jansen