2840 - Caspar Wolf

Caspar Wolf 1735 Muri, Aargau – 1783 Heidelberg Upper Staubbach Falls in the Lauterbrunnen Valley Oil on canvas Signed “C. Wolf” on a rock in the lower right corner. Labeled “Wolf C. No. 47 E” on the reverse side of an old label. Framed 47.5 × 32 cm Caspar Wolf and the Aesthetic Conquest of Nature, Kunstmuseum Basel, October 19, 2014 – February 1, 2015, No. 67 (with full-page illustration in the exhibition catalog, p. 155) The painting is offered in a richly carved wooden frame attributed to Johann Friedrich Funk I (1706–1775). Peter Fischer, curator of the Caspar Wolf Museum in Muri, has examined the work on site and considers it to be a replica painted by Caspar Wolf himself, based on the first version of his painting. Caspar Wolf ranks among the most significant Swiss landscape painters of the 18th century and is regarded as a pioneer of Alpine landscape painting. With his vivid depictions, he contributed significantly to the artistic discovery of the Swiss mountain world and to the growing interest in the direct observation of nature. Born in Muri in the canton of Aargau as the son of a carpenter, he began an apprenticeship in 1749 with the Constance court painter Johann Jakob Anton von Lenz. After spending several years as a journeyman in southern Germany, he returned to Switzerland in 1760, where he initially carried out church commissions and decorative paintings. A stay in Paris from 1769 to 1771, where he worked in the circle of the landscape painter Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, shaped his artistic development. Beginning in 1773, Wolf devoted himself increasingly to the Swiss Alps. Commissioned by the Bernese publisher Abraham Wagner, he undertook extensive and dangerous study trips into the high mountains, often together with the naturalist Jakob Samuel Wyttenbach. On site, he produced precise drawings and oil studies that served as the basis for the works he refined in his Bern studio. The large-format landscape paintings were not primarily intended for sale but served as templates for meticulously detailed and elaborately produced prints. In 1777, Abraham Wagner’s publishing house in Bern released the first “Remarkable Views of the Swiss Mountains” as well as the series “Alpes Helveticae.” The colored outline etchings and other prints based on Wolf’s paintings introduced a broad audience to the previously little-known high-mountain landscapes of Switzerland and played a significant role in making his views known throughout Europe. By elevating Alpine nature to a subject in its own right and placing its overwhelming scale at the center of his work, Wolf made a significant contribution to the development of European landscape painting between the Enlightenment and the Romantic era. Wolf died in Heidelberg in 1783. The great popularity of his motifs led to individual landscapes being reproduced later in smaller oil paintings, sometimes with variations in the figurative elements or the atmospheric conditions. These versions—which include both the present painting and the two other works by Caspar Wolf offered in this auction—were likely created primarily for private patrons and for sale. The painting on offer depicts the Upper Staubbach Falls in the Lauterbrunnen Valley and illustrates Wolf’s interest in the elemental forces of nature as well as the aesthetic impact of glaciers, waterfalls, gorges, and impressive rock formations. The water cascades over massive rock steps lined with dark coniferous trees, bubbling as it plunges into the depths. A small rainbow even forms in the spray below. The high-contrast juxtaposition of the white, foaming water with the earthy brown and ochre tones of the imposing rocks lends the composition a powerful sense of drama. The two small figures standing on a ledge in the foreground help the viewer grasp the immense scale of this natural spectacle. In the interplay of the impressive rocky backdrop and the churning water, the tension between the forces of nature, close observation, and painterly order—which is characteristic of Wolf’s conception of landscape—unfolds. Here, the landscape is understood not merely as a topographically definable place, but also as a space for experience in which the sublimity and beauty of nature are revealed. The motif was executed in various versions and circulated as a print: a larger oil painting from 1774 is housed at the Kunst Museum Winterthur / Reinhart am Stadtgarten, and a smaller version, likely created around 1776, is held at the Caspar Wolf Museum in Muri. In 1777, the etching “Première Chûte du Staubbach” was published as sheet no. 4 in the series “Alpes Helveticae.” Around 1780–1782, the motif was also rendered in Paris as a colored aquatint by Jean-François Janinet for the work “Vues remarquables des montagnes de la Suisse.” Auction date: November 28, 2026 Approximate auction time: 11:14 a.m. CET