As a prolific artist and mountaineer, Gabriel Loppé (1825–1913) is now recognised as the first painter to have depicted what the French call la haute montagne. He was the founder of the peintre-alpiniste school of painting and, with a brush in one hand and an ice axe in the other, his eighty-eight years were lived with a great independence of spirit which rewarded him at every turn. Loppé was in the prime of his life when mountaineering became an established activity in the 1860s and painting outdoors, en plein air, was becoming popular. The manifest advances in industry and engineering also enabled Loppé to divide his time between Chamonix, Paris and London. The man was in every respect a product of his age with a very real affinity for people and urban life. Against a backdrop of shifting political and cultural ideals, he espoused progress and the concept of modernité expressed by Baudelaire in his 1864 essay The Painter of Modern Life. William Mitchell’s 200-page book is the first in English dedicated to the life and work of Gabriel Loppé, with over 100 colour illustrations, and many hitherto unpublished works.
Published in 2018, William Mitchell’s Gabriel Loppé: Peintre-Alpiniste is an important reference for collectors, scholars and enthusiasts of Gabriel Loppé, Alpine painting and nineteenth-century mountain art. Drawing on extensive research, the monograph brings together paintings, drawings, photographs and archival material to provide a detailed study of Loppé’s artistic career and enduring significance within the history of mountain painting.
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