Vue du lac de Challes et du Mont Blanc (View of the Lake of Challes and Mont Blanc)

Sometimes it is a tourist who can best appreciate the special qualities of a place. The French artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun, spending the summers of 1807 and 1808 in Switzerland, found the picturesque alpine landscape inspiring. Her many letters home describe her exhilaration at the sight of this breathtaking scenery. Following an excursion to view Mont Blanc, which gleams brightly at the top of this pastel, she wrote of the radiant colors of the landscape and play of light, “I was seized with a desire to paint this reflected light; quickly I snatched up my pastels.” Vigée-LeBrun learned the art of pastel early, from her father, the pastelist Louis Vigée. The medium was well suited to her favored genres of portraiture and landscape. Her diary records “about a hundred pastel landscapes of Switzerland painted during my travels, ” yet lamentably just six pastels by her are known today, including this work rediscovered in 2006.