Although Burger cannot be categorized as a Symbolist in the strictest sense, his palette, his penchant for jagged outlines and his ethereal skies owes much to Ferdinand Hodler, the leading Swiss painter of the late nineteenth century. Wilhelm, or Willy, Burger is nowadays better known as a graphic artist and his lithograph posters such as, Jungfraubahn. Station Jungfrau: Joch 3457 m. Aletschgletscher, 1914 and St. Moritz, 1912 remain more costly than his oil paintings. However, he was first and foremost a painter by training who apprenticed in Zurich before leaving for Philadelphia and New York in 1908. He returned to Switzerland in 1913 and set up a studio in Rüschlikon on the west shore of Lake Zürich from where he would travel throughout the Alps, the Mediterranean and as far afield as Egypt for his commissions.

This striking watercolour was made from the Rothorn mountains up above Zermatt. To the left is the summit of the majestic Dom, Switzerland’s highest mountain within its borders, flanked by the equally imposing Täschhorn. The grass on slopes in the foreground has turned tawny coloured from a summer’s worth of sunshine.