CLAUDE-LOUIS CHÂTELET (PARIS 1753-1795)

This landscape was probably produced during Châtelet's trip to Switzerland, around 1780-1781, when he took part in the publishing project led by Jean-Benjamin de Laborde and Baron Fidel de Zurlauben, Tableaux topographiques, pittoresques, physiques, historiques, moraux, politique, littéraires de la Suisse et de l’Italie (Paris, 1780-1786). A very similar view of the falls at Schaffhausen, also on blue paper and in the same technique, was sold at Sotheby’s, 23 January 2001, lot 336 (formerly in the Gaines collection). The present drawing is also similar to a view in the Horvitz collection (A. Clark, Mastery and Elegance. Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Harvard University Art Museums, and elsewhere, p. 413, no. A.66, ill.).