BY LAND AND BY SEA

19^TH CENTURY PAINTINGS, AUCTION 19 SEPTEMBER 2025

In 1863, Eugène Boudin spent his first summer in the Normandy town of Trouville, which had become a fashionable seaside resort since the arrival of the railway. He would devote numerous canvases to Trouville, painting elegant bathers before the grand hotels as well as views of the harbour. The present work, painted in 1879 from the Deauville bank at the Touques bridge, shows the quay lined with fishing boats and rowing skiffs. Boudin captures with brio the light, reflections and atmosphere of Normandy, and would particularly inspire one of the forerunners of Impressionism—his pupil Claude Monet.

In this late work, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot demonstrates his mastery in conveying atmosphere and natural light. A foreground of deep greens, dominated by a majestic tree, contrasts harmoniously with the luminous distance, where a sky mottled with bluish clouds opens outwards. Corot painted this work between 1860 and 1865; it displays hallmarks of his mature pahse: layered planes, the solitary figure, and dwellings receding in the distance. Often inspired by his travels in Italy, his canvases unite keen observation of nature with poetic resonance. Regarded as a pioneer of plein-air painting, Corot influenced not only the landscape painters of his day but also the emerging Impressionists. The appeal of his Italianate landscapes has never waned. 'The Italian Goatherd' offered in our September sale belonged, from 1914, to the collection of the American philanthropist Estelle Doheny, before entering a Swiss collection in 1988.

Mount Kofel, rising to 1,342 metres in the Bavarian Alps, with its distinctive profile, is a true regional emblem. It forms the striking backdrop to Carl Spitzweg’s composition. A nature-lover and passionate amateur botanist, Spitzweg renders the mountain in subtly modulated browns, yellows and greens, with carefully observed trees and tiny touches of blue and white for alpine flowers. Our painting is one of five known versions of the subject and, together with the example in the Georg Schäfer Museum, among the most accomplished. Spitzweg transposes the Romantic language of his era into scenes of everyday life, while the imposing Kofel rockface in the distance lends the whole a compelling majesty.

In his youth, Ivan Aivazovsky often painted calm, harmonious seascapes; his late oeuvre, however, turns to more dramatic compositions that focus on the sea’s raw power. Painted in 1898—two years before his death—the work offered here draws us into waters churned by a formidable swell, and demonstrates the artist’s virtuosity in rendering light upon the waves. Aivazovsky was only thirty when, in 1847, he was appointed Professor of Marine Painting at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg; he was later named ‘Official painter to the Imperial Navy’ by Tsar Nicholas I. International recognition soon took him to Europe’s most active artistic centres. The restricted palette and balanced composition of this canvas lend it an enduring modernity.

CARLO BOSSOLI

View of Lake Geneva, the city and Mont Blanc
Gouache and tempera on paper laid on canvas, 57.8 × 86.6 cm
Estimate: CHF 25 000 / 35 000

CARL SPITZWEG

The Nativity (Adoration of the Magi), c. 1845–50
Oil on canvas, 26.5 × 26.4 cm
Estimate: CHF 20 000 / 30 000

EMILIE PREYER

Still life with fruit and a Champagne coupe
Oil on canvas, 25.3 × 35.2 cm
Estimate: CHF 20 000 / 30 000

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