THE DOM AND THE TÄSCHORN PAINTED BY W. F. BURGER

WILHELM FRIEDRICH BURGER (1882 -1964)
The Dom (4,545 m (14,911 ft)
The Täschhorn (4,491 m -14,734 ft)
Switzerland

In The Dom and Täschhorn above Zermatt, watercolour, 30.5 x 37.5 cm.
Courtesy John Mitchell Fine Arts London

 
The mountains
The Dom (4 ,545 m  -14,911 ft)  is a mountain of the Pennine Alps, located between Randa and Saas-Fee in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It is the seventh highest summit in the Alps, overall.  Based on prominence, it can be regarded as the third highest mountain in the Alps, and the second highest in Switzerland, after Monte Rosa. The Dom is the main summit of the Mischabel group (German: Mischabelhörner), which is the highest massif lying entirely in Switzerland. The Dom is noteworthy for its 'normal route' of ascent having the greatest vertical height gain of all the alpine 4000 metre peaks, and none of that route's 3,100 metres of height can be achieved using mechanical means. Although Dom is a German cognate for 'dome', it can also mean 'cathedral' and the mountain is named after Canon Berchtold of Sitten cathedral, the first person to survey the vicinity. The former name Mischabel comes from an ancient German dialect term for pitchfork, as the highest peaks of the massif stand close to each other.
The Täschhorn (4,491 m - 14,734 ft) is  lying south of the Dom within the Mischabel range.  Täschorn is a little lower than Dom but more difficult to access because there is mandatory rock climbing. Täschorn is a 3 sides pyramid.  East face is above Saas Fee, W face is above Täsch (last village before Zermatt), and huge South face is above Täschalp (Ottavan).  Each side belongs a glacier: on Täsch side is Kingletscher, on Ottavan side is Weingartengletscher, on Saas side is Feegletscher. The first ascent of the mountain was by John Llewelyn Davies and J. W. Hayward with guides Stefan and Johann Zumtaugwald and Peter-Josef Summermatter on 30 July 1862. The normal route is on the SE ridge starting from Mischabeljoch. To join the Mischabel pass, it's possible to come from either Saas Fee side or Täsch side.

 
The painter
Wilhelm, or Willy, Burger is nowadays widely recognized as one of the leading graphic artists of his time. His lithograph posters such as, Jungfraubahn. Station Jungfrau: Joch 3457m. Aletschgletscher, 1914 and St. Moritz, 1912are far better known – and more costly – than his oil paintings. However, he was first and foremost a painter by training who apprenticed in Zurich before leaving for Philadelphia and New York in 1908. He returned to Switzerland in 1913 where he set up a studio in Rüschlikon on the west shore of Lake Zürich from where he would travel throughout the Alps, the Mediterranean and as far afield as Egypt for his commissions. Although Burger cannot be categorized as a Symbolist in the strictest sense, his palette, his penchant for jagged outlines and his ethereal skies owe much to Ferdinand Hodler, the leading Swiss painter of the late nineteenth century. Hovering between Realism and Symbolism in style, this late afternoon view over the Zürichsee from the edge of the lake at Rüschlikon is an overt homage to Hodler who painted nearly 150 pictures of the Swiss lakes, many of them in a similar, panoramic format. Burger went so far as to sign his picture with a more spidery signature than usual – a pastiche of Hodler’s.
From 1901 onwards, Hodler began to concentrate on a series of acclaimed visions of Lac Léman (Geneva) in which he delineated horizontal bands of differing colours and tone. As he developed the theme of receding lines across the lake, or ‘parallelism’, as he called it, Mont Blanc and its surrounding peaks were introduced into the background. Hodler died in 1918 but in these late paintings he sought to express his concept of unité – the idea that there was a fundamental order to the universe and the artist’s role was to reveal it.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau