Lake Garda – Bernese Defile – Etsch – Beaumont, Jean François Albanis de (Chambéry 1755 – 1812). The Pass of Chiusa and distant Mountains near Belluno and Osseniego. On the left the Bernese Defile situated between Lake Garda and Etsch, on the right the pass with the fortifications of Fort Chiusa. With figures by the pass and on the Etsch. Coloured aquatint by Cornelis Apostool (1762 Amsterdam 1844). 1792. Inscribed: A. Beaumont del. / C. Apostool sculpt. / Published as the Act directs Jany 1. 1792. by T. & G. Egerton, Whitehall. for the Author, title as above. 31.5 x 44.7 cm.
Fine Tyrolese mountain landscape in the splendid original colouring
and in the wide-margined impression of the 1st edition on buff Whatman paper. Isolated little foxspots. The colours of the part of the sky occasionally somewhat oxidized, but hardly disturbing.
Sir Albanis distinguishes himself as draughtsman, engraver in aquatint, and landscapist as well as architect. Hailing from the Piedmont he was naturalized in England. Egg says on him:
“ Publishes a large number of views from Italy and the Alps between 1787 and 1806 which he partly engraves himself in aquatint manner and partly lets be engraved by Cornelis Apostool. His engravings belong
to the earliest representations of pure mountain landscapes from the Tyrol … ”
Apostool, painter, draughtsman and engraver, but, like Goethe, rather to be reckoned among the so-called amateur artists, received his education at the Amsterdam Drawing Academy (1784-1786) by the landscapist Hendrik Meijer, whom subsequently he accompanied to England, where he lived many years in London. His ca. 80
fine landscape aquatints esteemed by the connoisseurs ,
many of them after Netherlandish masters and the Alpine travel sketches of Sir Albanis de Beaumont, were published in several sets between 1790 and 1795. They are the result of that period artistically so extraordinarily fertilizing to him. In later years artistically he worked still only from diversion.
Simultaneously, and still later, too, he had carried out orders of the Netherlandish government on behalf of which he went also to New York and France.
1807 finally back in Amsterdam he became the first director of the Royal Amsterdam Museum (1808) and member of the Royal Institute for Sciences, Literature, and Fine Arts. 1816 Knight of the Order of the Netherlandish Lion.
Offer no. 15,246 / EUR 870. / export price EUR 827. (c. US$ 1154.) + shipping
„ Ich bin sehr zufrieden mit dem Objekt, dem Versand und auch mit der sorgfältigen Verpackung. Danke! “
(Herr N. B., 3. Januar 2003)