Zwitsersche gezigten. / Vues Suisses 1834 - 1842

Curator: Well, aren't these vignettes just darling? I feel like I've stumbled into a slightly surreal travel journal from another era. Editor: Indeed. What we're looking at is a print titled "Zwitsersche Gezigten / Vues Suisses," created by Delhuvenne & Co. Wellens sometime between 1834 and 1842. It employs engraving to depict various Swiss views. Curator: They are ever so charming in their simplicity. But looking closer, something’s slightly…off. The colours feel…artificial somehow, wouldn't you say? A naive charm meets the sublime landscape...It tickles my fancy. Editor: Precisely. The limited palette and somewhat rudimentary rendering certainly lend a naive quality. Consider, however, how the composition draws the eye--the almost diagrammatic clarity of the buildings in Frankfurt or the romantic ruins framed perfectly in the image of Gruyères… Curator: It is striking when you put it that way, but the rigid composition combined with the unusual colours and distortions in scale gives off this unsettling and otherworldly feeling. This wasn't intended for realism. Did people actually perceive Switzerland that way? Editor: One might say this reflects a Romanticized vision, less concerned with topographic accuracy and more with evoking an emotional response to the landscape and built environment. The repetitive, almost schematic presentation invites a structural reading, contrasting urban spaces with rural scenes. There's an element of early tourism and a burgeoning sense of national identity at play. Curator: National identity indeed! Perhaps that uncanny valley feeling stems from these disparate aims—tourism meets idealism, compressed through the aesthetic prism of romanticism. The colourist probably had a few glasses of wine when working, maybe? It just all blends together like some fever dream of Switzerland. Editor: I am not sure about that, but such delightful conjecture allows us a fresh perspective. And that ultimately, I think, captures this work’s strange but irresistible power. Curator: Strange, indeed, but powerful...I shall muse over this for many more afternoon tea sessions.