The Haute Route was originally an epic summer mountaineering route from Chamonix, below Mont Blanc, to Zermatt and the Matterhorn, travelling eastwards across the European Alps. From its inception in the middle of the nineteenth century, when it typically took twelve or more days in good conditions, it has spawned variations, including a ski-mountaineering route that wasn’t completed successfully until 1911. This article shows some paintings spanning a painted version which takes us rather further, starting on the south shore of Lake Geneva, and ending up in the Wetterstein Alps on the southern border between Germany and Austria.
In his final few years, Ferdinand Hodler painted some of the most sublime landscapes from his apartment, looking across Lake Geneva towards the distant Mont Blanc massif.
Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc in the (Red) Dawn Light (1918) is one of the simplest of these in its structure, with water coloured by the sky, a zone of blue reflections of the far bank, the merged distant shore and mountains, and the sky.
Cross over to that southern shore, and you’ll find the Grammont.
In the summer of 1917, Hodler painted this fine view of The Grammont in the Morning Sun. This shows one of the highest peaks overlooking Lake Geneva on its southern shore, rising to a summit at 2,172 metres (7,126 feet) elevation.
Passing into Hodler’s distance, we reach Chamonix and Mont Blanc.
Gabriel Loppé’s Crevasses Below the Grands Mulets, Ascent of Mont Blanc was painted between 1875-83, and shows a view at an altitude of around 3,000 metres (10,000 feet), now the site of a refuge hut or bothy. Loppé was unusually both a painter and mountaineer, completing over forty ascents of Mont Blanc, often making oil sketches when climbing.
Between its long ridges of peaks, the Alps are crossed by a series of high passes, among them the Simplon.
John Singer Sargent met up with the artist Ambrogio Raffele when he returned to the Alps during the summers of 1909 to 1911, and painted this watercolour of him as Artist in the Simplon at some time in those years. Raffele is shown painting a view of the Fletschhorn, which is to the south-west of the Simplon Pass. That peak reaches 3,986 metres (13,077 feet) elevation, and was first climbed in 1854, although its imposing north face proved more technically challenging and wasn’t ascended until 1927.
In July of 1902, Hodler stayed in Reichenbach im Kandertal in southern Switzerland, from where he went out to the hamlet of Isenfluh to paint The Jungfrau from Isenfluh, one of his most spectacular paintings of valleys and mountains. The distant peak of the Jungfrau (4,158 metres or 13,642 feet) is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, to the east of the Chablais Alps shown in his views over Lake Geneva. Here the rock and ice of the Jungfrau floats in a world of its own above a belt of cloud and the deep, richly vegetated valleys below.
To the north-east of the Jungfrau is Grindelwald, where Caspar Wolf painted some of the earliest faithful depictions of the mountains of central Europe.
His Panorama of Grindelwald with the Wetterhorn, Mettenberg and Eiger, from 1774, shows two prominent glaciers flowing down towards the village of Grindelwald from the massif behind. The Eiger, of course, is well known for the great challenge it has presented to those trying to climb it via its north face. It wasn’t until 1938 that this route was successfully completed, to reach its 3,967 metre (13,015 feet) summit.
Pressing on to the border between Switzerland and Italy, we reach the Pennine Alps.
In 1906, Eugen Bracht painted this superb View of the Monte Rosa, West Side. The Monte Rosa massif is a complex of peaks rising to a maximum of 4,634 metres (15,203 feet), making it the second highest in western Europe (excluding the Caucasus) after Mont Blanc.
A decade later, Bracht visited the Wetterstein Alps on the southern border between Germany and Austria, where he painted this fine view of the Zugspitze (1916), probably en plein air. At 2,962 metres (9,718 feet) elevation, this is the highest mountain in Germany. From there it’s a short trip north to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where our Haute Route ends.