In April 2021, John Mitchell Fine Paintings was featured in the Antiques Trade Gazette following our acquisition of two important oil studies by Gabriel Loppé (1825–1913), the French painter, photographer and mountaineer whose life and work were closely associated with Mont Blanc, Chamonix and the French Alps.
In Loppé pays homage to Mont Blanc, Alex Capon explored Loppé’s remarkable career as both an Alpine painter and accomplished mountaineer. The artist climbed Mont Blanc more than 30 times and was among the first artists able to paint at high altitude, capturing the grandeur and beauty of the mountains and glaciers directly from observation. Over some 50 seasons spent climbing and painting in and around Chamonix, Loppé regularly worked en plein air, producing oil studies among the glaciers and high peaks of the Mont Blanc massif.
As the article recalled, author and critic Sir Leslie Stephen, himself an important figure in the Golden Age of mountaineering, jokingly described Loppé as “the court painter to his Majesty Mont Blanc.” His life and work came to epitomise the spirit of the Golden Age of mountaineering, and the Antiques Trade Gazette noted that Loppé remained “at the summit of the market for Alpine art.”
The two signed Gabriel Loppé paintings appeared at auction at Greenslade Taylor Hunt in Taunton on 25 March 2021, having been discovered during a house clearance in west Somerset. Both were modestly estimated at £200–£300. The first, an atmospheric view of Mont Blanc at sunset, sold for £5,000, while the second, a dramatic glacial landscape with teetering seracs and swirling clouds, reached £20,000. Both paintings were acquired by William Mitchell of John Mitchell Fine Paintings against strong competition from online bidders.
William identified the paintings as plein air studies made on the spot for two monumental canvases painted by Loppé in the late 1870s and subsequently brought to London for exhibition. The finished paintings later hung at L’Hôtel Majestic in Chamonix. The £20,000 glacier study depicted the Aiguille du Midi across the Glacier des Bossons on the ascent of Mont Blanc, and related to one of Loppé’s best-known Alpine paintings.
The acquisitions were particularly timely, taking place during our annual Peaks & Glaciers exhibition of Alpine paintings. William, himself a keen climber and longstanding specialist in Gabriel Loppé and painters of the Alps, recalled an earlier discovery at the same Taunton saleroom:
“When I first got interested in Loppé in the mid-1990s, a beautiful, undisturbed glacier picture came up for sale in the same saleroom in Taunton in 1998. I remember paying about £4,000 for it... It seems history repeated itself but this time with bigger multiples!”
The feature appeared in the 24 April 2021 edition of the Antiques Trade Gazette and highlighted both the enduring market for Gabriel Loppé’s Alpine paintings and the importance of his directly observed studies of Mont Blanc, the Glacier des Bossons, Aiguille du Midi and the glaciers of Chamonix.