Albert Trachsel (1863-1929) - The Lovers Of The Lake

Albert Trachsel (1863-1929)
The Lovers of the lake
36 x 45 cm at sight
(57 x 67 cm with frame)
Signed lower right

After having studied at the School of Fine Arts in Geneva and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, he joined the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, where he stayed in the 1880s, bonding with his compatriots, among others Maurice Baud. He traveled to Europe before meeting and befriending Ferdinand Hodler and the sculptor Auguste de Niederhausern. From 1889, he frequented the Symbolist milieu of Paris. In 1890, he participated in the competition for the future palace of Rumine. The same year, Trachsel published A few words on Swiss art. In 1891 and 1892, he presented his drawings of utopian architecture at the Exhibition of Independent Artists and took part in the Salon de la Rose-Croix in Paris. Back in Geneva (1893), he worked on the drawings for the album of utopian architectures, The real festivals. This album represents the first volume of an unfinished three-part cycle, The Poem, in which he visualizes ideas close to those of the Symbolists. This trilogy and its literary counterpart, The Cycle (1893), were to constitute a total work of art called Harmony. In 1896, he designed the decoration of the Chinese shadow theater Le Sapajou presented at the Swiss National Exhibition. Established in Geneva from 1901, Trachsel. definitively abandoned architecture to devote himself to writing and painting. Between 1905 and 1914, he produced Dream Landscapes, his main work, imaginary visualizations of landscapes of the soul, to be compared with the fantastic tales he published at the same time. After 1914, he painted only Geneva landscapes, without any reference to his imaginary worlds.