The Swiss Alps are awesome and beautiful. Their imposing appearance challenges the mountaineer and the artist.
This pair of hand-tinted etchings are exquisite up close, but from a distance can be overlooked as maybe some souvenir postcards. Our love for the mountains can also bring ubiquity.
Hans Frey made a lot of mountain pictures, as you can see on this website:
https://sites.google.com/site/cataloguespolygraphicum/hans-frey
In fact, the picture above is among the smaller ones near the end. My first guess of the subject is the Dents du Midi, “teeth of noon,” near Lake Geneva, but I’m not so sure.
Frey either lived 1877-1935 or 1900-1983, in Munich, Switzerland, or Austria. Some of his works were sold at Paul H. Wilde, Etchings, Prints, Fine Framing, 2427 Broadway, New York. Neither of these have a gallery mark on the back.
The other of these aquatints is not represented on that website, but you can find one like it, “eiger.moench.jungfrau.” It is five up from the mass of tiny mountains at the bottom.
Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau are peaks in the Alps. This northern wall is, “one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps.” [Wikipedia.] After trains and a tunnel, this area became an enticing vacation spot. In 2001, it was named a World Heritage Site.
Jungfrau is a maiden, a virgin, lovely but imposing. Six Swiss Army recruits died climbing Jungfrau in an avalanche in 2007.
Rumpus Art Panel 