In March 2021, we were delighted to acquire two important oil studies by Gabriel Loppé (1825–1913), the French painter, photographer and mountaineer best known for his pioneering paintings of Mont Blanc, Chamonix and the French Alps. The two works appeared unexpectedly at auction in Taunton, having been discovered during a house clearance in west Somerset.
Both paintings were signed and had been modestly estimated at £200–£300. The first depicted Mont Blanc at sunset, while the second showed a dramatic glacial landscape, with teetering seracs and swirling clouds. The paintings sold for £5,000 and £20,000 respectively and were both acquired by John Mitchell Fine Paintings.
William Mitchell identified the works as plein air studies painted on the spot for two monumental canvases that Loppé completed in the late 1870s and brought to London for exhibition. The larger finished paintings subsequently hung at L’Hôtel Majestic in Chamonix. The glacier study, depicting the Aiguille du Midi across the Glacier des Bossons on the ascent of Mont Blanc, related to one of Loppé’s best-known Alpine paintings.
Loppé was an accomplished mountaineer as well as an artist and climbed Mont Blanc more than thirty times. Over some fifty seasons spent climbing and painting in and around Chamonix, he made numerous plein air oil studies at altitude, working directly among the mountains and glaciers. His ability to combine the experience of the mountaineer with that of the painter distinguished him from earlier Alpine landscape artists and allowed him to capture the snow, ice, changing weather and high mountain atmosphere from first-hand observation.
The discovery was particularly timely as the paintings were acquired during our annual Peaks & Glaciers exhibition of Alpine paintings. It also marked a return to familiar territory for William, who had bought an undisturbed Loppé glacier painting from the same Taunton saleroom in 1998, shortly after he first became interested in the artist in the mid-1990s.
The rediscovery and acquisition of the two Gabriel Loppé paintings was subsequently featured in the Antiques Trade Gazette in April 2021, which explored Loppé’s importance as a painter of Mont Blanc and the glaciers of the Alps, as well as the enduring appeal of his directly observed high-altitude landscapes.
