Consulted if necessary, Most of the time you can handle a biography as if it were a map, Within which to find, briefly outlined, the face of an author, up to that moment admired only through his works.
Unlike the maps, however, biographies are not limited to indicating a north and a south, but also report a before and after, looking for each event differently, depending on its relevance.
Over the years, names, dates, crucial passages, episodes that at first glance may appear less relevant cross each other, motivating a decision judged subsequently extraordinary and ingenious. Every time it surprises to find out how many things happened thanks or because of a fate that, if he had decided to intervene differently, would have changed the course of events.
The biographies, therefore, when they tell the compelling plot of a story, indicate us a possible direction, so as to establish a continuity. A very long premise, to remember, Exactly two hundred years after birth, Gabriel Loppéborn in Monpellier on July 2, 1825 (he died in Paris in 1913): painter, but also a photographer, but also mountaineer, encountered by reading a short biography: not his, however, but that of Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary critic, philosopher and in turn mountaineering, as well as the father of Virginia Woolf. First to reach the top of very important peaks, Stephen on many occasions has made his companies in the company of the Swiss guide Melchior Anderegg. This also happened on September 4, 1871, when they reached the summit of Mont Mallet, located not far from Mont Blanc. In the report, a short note adds that In their company there was G. Loppewith the only initial letter of the name and the surname without emphasis.
Is it he said to me? I went to watch, finding confirmation: Gabriel Loppé. Following this track I could not help but forward me to a biography that many, perhaps, will know. I remembered that I read about him on the occasion of an exhibition hosted a couple of years ago in the exhibition halls of the Bart Fort: accompanied by images, those articles reproduced some of his paintings, with a huge format. Detailed subjects depicting mountains, not caught from the bottom or from medium height, as it almost always happens, but from above. I immediately went to read about him, remaining, as well as amazed, trapped in that first escape of biography.
Now, after filling pages and pages of notes, the feeling of being trapped in his biography has magnified. It is difficult to observe only the works: for over sixty years, from 1849 to 1912, every summer he stayed in Chamonix, bringing with him canvases and brushes. This is not a novelty, even Dürer, four centuries earlier painted during his movements, also Turner, after him segnts and how many others. What Loppé distinguishes is the fact that he went to the top of the mountainsnot only to portray them from above in their majesty and beauty, without exploiting the highest level, as he could have done very well, the emotional path already opened by romantic painters: no, he also went up and, perhaps, above all, to document. The fiery sunsets were available there, it was enough to portray them, avoiding the filters of the sublime. No panic effect, it was sufficient to restore the enchantment caused by those places with great loyalty.
Crepacci, spurs of sharp rock, deep and swallowing gorges, alternating with light stretches of ice. He painted the ice he saw, not what he remembered that he had seen. On the other hand, if immersing yourself in those panoramas was “the most beautiful dream of all dreams”, dreaming was not necessary. First in the small format, directly painted “on the reason”, then, once returned to the studio-chalet built in 1869 in Chamonix, big.
This is so, it seems simple. Let’s add some data then: It seems that Mont Blanc has climbed it, when starting from 1861 one forty times and on at least three occasions the easel on the top has placed you. Also with Edward Whymper – Famous for organizing the first, tragic climb to the Matterhorn – Gabriel Loppé I made friends. Just from Zermat on several occasions he painted the Cervin.
First moved to Annecy and then to Paris, he traveled a lot, France, England, Scotland, however, His real home remained forever the Mont Blanc glacierstopping at the Colwing at the Colt Géant or alla Caban of the Grand Mule, at 3050 meter of altitude.
From 1880 he He was also a great quality photographer: family subjects such as grandchildren, friends or its mountains. Many shots dedicated them to the progress linked to the arrival of electric light or steam trains. Popularity and fame, after years of tiring walks, after dozens and dozens of paintings, transported from one place to another and performed with scrupulous attention, came to him thanks to a photographic image. He had managed to capture a summit, an iconic peak, a tip hoisted in 1889 in the heart of Paris: From his house in Boulevard du Troncaderro, seeing a time darkness approaching, he put himself at the window taking three lightnings downloading on the top of the Eiffel Tour: It was 21:20 on June 3, 1902.
Gabriel Loppé decided to write to Gustave Eiffel: “For the moment I still don’t have the prints of the shot of the tower affected by the lightning … I decided to perform the same printing operations (…). The first prints will be for her, illustrious ladies, which has conceived the most original, more modern monument, the only one able to transmit the feeling of immensity, of variety of the brightness of the Parisian sky. Atmosphere that the smoke of the factories has not managed to ruin and envelops the Parisian landscape of a harmony and an artistic charm “.
Many influential intellectual intellectuals of the time, Guy de Maupassant, for example stated: “This western pyramid and stacked with iron stairs, this gigantic and ungraded skeleton, whose base seems to be made to support a colossal cyclopi monument and then ends with the skinny and ridiculous profile of the chimney of a factory”. But Here you enter another biography.
