Snowy Landscape, Klosters Cavadurli, Silvretta, Switzerland

Oil on canvas by Clément Castelli depicting Cavadürli in Klosters and the Silvretta range. This luxury artwork captures the high-alpine atmosphere through a rich, textured palette knife execution showing beautiful natural patina.

Technical Information:

Code: QM252
Period: circa 1910
Origin: Paris
Author: Clément Castelli (1870-1959)
Technique: oil on canvas

Artwork dimensions: 38 x 55 cm (15.0 x 21.6 inches)
Dimensions with frame: 70 cm x 53 cm (27.5 x 20.8 inches)

Description:

This Clément Castelli alpine landscape painting depicts the hamlet of Cavadürli, situated in the Swiss municipality of Klosters. The composition unfolds from a foreground dominated by a steep, snow-covered slope, interrupted on the left by the silhouette of a dark wooden barn with a gabled roof entirely enveloped in thick snow. A trodden diagonal path cuts through the snow, guiding the viewer’s eye toward the background where the majestic Silvretta mountain range stands out, partially blanketed in snow and silhouetted against a clear sky of blue-gray tones.

The pictorial rendering shows an execution carried out predominantly with a palette knife and a loaded brush, a technique that gives sculptural relief and rich material thickness both to the rocky walls and the volumes of snow, highlighting its natural luster and patina. The color palette is set on a cool range of whites, grays, and shades of blue, contrasted by the warm brown tones of the wooden structure and delicate pink passages describing the incidence of sunlight on the luxury alpine peaks.

The artwork is signed on the lower right. On the reverse of the canvas, a coeval handwritten inscription identifies the painter and the precise geographical location (“Klosters – Cavadürli – Schweiz”), accompanied by a circular stamp bearing the painter’s name and city: Paris. The painting is set within a beautifully carved wooden frame with continuous leafy scroll motifs, finished in elegant tones of white and gray, and completed with gold highlights.

Biographical notes on the author: Clément Castelli (Premia, 1870 – Paris, 1959), a naturalized French painter, dedicated his artistic activity to representing high-altitude landscapes. Trained in Paris, he regularly exhibited at the Salon della Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon des Indépendants. As a member of the Société des Peintres de Montagne, he documented the main French, Swiss, and Italian alpine groups, perfecting a rich tactile language based on the use of the palette knife to convey the solid consistency of rocks and snow-covered surfaces.