View Above Handeck, Switzerland

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

1875 · Watercolor heightened with gouache, on blue paper · Drawings and Prints

Architect, theorist, and draftsman, Viollet-le-Duc spent the last years of his life living in Switzerland, where he worked on the restoration of the Cathedral of Lausanne and on preparing a map of the Mont Blanc massif. The map was published in 1876 with a "study of its geodesic and geological construction, its transformations, and the old and modern state of its glaciers." Although executed in an area outside the focus of the map, this drawing relates to those made for that project, combining the careful, analytical approach to recording the terrain with a more painterly and evocative use of the watercolor medium.

Artist

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

Date

1875

Medium

Watercolor heightened with gouache, on blue paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, The Isaacson-Draper Foundation Gift, in memory of Jacob Bean, 2018