During his lifetime Gabriel Loppé earned an international reputation as the leading peintre-alpiniste and the most accomplished artist to have painted the Alps. He was in many ways the ‘Canaletto’ of Chamonix, Zermatt and the Bernese Oberland; the master of his subject but in this case one who had actually stood upon many of the major summits in the Alps.

This wonderful panorama looking down onto the Chamonix valley dates from 1880. The sun is setting on climbers coming off Mt. Blanc heading to the safety of the Refuge des Grands Mulets at an altitude of 3015 metres. The hut is perched on the tower of rock in the middle of the composition which divides the Glacier du Taconnaz and the Glacier des Bossons. At the time this was the only route up to Mont Blanc via the Montagne de la Côte from Chamonix and in August 1862 Loppé spent two weeks up there climbing and painting without descending to the valley floor. The Grands Mulets hut was a special place for Loppé in other ways too. Having first climbed Mont Blanc in 1861, the first of his approximately forty ascents of the mountain in his lifetime, he took his sixteen year old daughter, Aline, to the summit in 1873. And then in 1896, to commemorate his fiftieth year of climbing, Loppé took Aline’s daughter, Gabrielle, up to the Grands Mulets hut. His intrepid grand-daughter was ten years old at the time.

- William Mitchell, Peaks & Glaciers 2016