Hurlingham Fine Arts

Description

A fine 19th century oil of the Wetterhorn from Grindelwald, Switzerland,by leading American artist, William Stanley Haseltine, exhibited at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, November 1936.

Haseltine arrived in Dusseldorf in 1855 to be tutored by Andreas Achenbach. His friends and constant companions were fellow American artists, Emanuel Leutze, Worthington Whittredge and Albert Bierstadt. Summer vacations were spent sketching together in Switzerland and Haseltine accompanied the three when they moved to Rome in 1857.

In the late summer of 1856, Haseltine set out from Meiringen to climb the Reichenbach Falls with his compatriots. There they met a party of English tourists who persuaded them to walk on to Faulhorn, some 25 miles further. Their route took them through the ' Valley of the Roses', Rosenlau, and the Great Scheidegg pass until they eventually arrived at Faulhorn. Haseltine wrote to his mother at Meiringen on September 3rd, 1856, ' We procured ourselves a guide and started down by another track, seldom used by travellers, by one traveller it will never be used again! The ridge of cliff over which we were obliged to pass appeared impassable, but our guide, one of that class of men who hang on the perpendicular side of a mountain like a fly, and whose gravitation proclivities must be in a contrary direction to that of more lowly born mortals,contrived to find out a sort of goat track, which he called a path the track was steep and narrow,and covered with loose, slipping stones, and the slightest swerve to the right or left meant certain destruction. No sign of man intruded on this awesome solitude and wild desolation.....As we wended our way home,we passed chasms formed by the sweep of a thousand avalanches here and there patches of melting snow, all a striking contrast to the quiet simplicity of the Alpine valleys with their green meadows,peaceful dwellings,lowing herds and happy faces, and where Nature seems to smile on man's labours.'

His daughter writes 'Haseltine came away from those two Swiss tours with his portfolio bulging with sketches, of which sixty or seventy still exist they contain carefully pencilled remarks about colours, light and shades, showing clearly what enthusiasm he was putting into his work.'

The Herbert F.Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York, holds a similar work painted by his companion, Albert Bierstadt, entitled 'Spur of the Edge at Sunset, Grindelwald' painted circa 1868.

Provenance: Mrs Helen Haseltine Plowden

Literature: Illustrated Plate VI, 'William Stanley Haseltine, The Life of the Sea and Landscape Painter by his his daughter, Helen Haseltine Plowden.' 31 plates in photogravure, first published 1947 by Frederick Muller, London W.C.I.

Canvas size: 14 x 23 inches.

Current Condition: Original unlined canvas with old repair.

Exhibitions: The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, November 1936