View toward the Mont Blanc Massif from the Artist’s Studio at Geneva, with a Self-portrait

Jean-Etienne Liotard

1765 - 1770

pastel op perkament

Rijksmuseum

A landscape view from a studio window shows snow-capped mountains in the distance, a body of water, and a foreground with a person in an orange hat and blue jacket. The extraordinary modernity of this ‘snapshot’ view from a window of Liotard’s house in Geneva has made it one of his most famous works. He eschews the usual pictorial conventions for landscapes, so that the work has an unusual freshness and immediacy despite its minute detail. The inclusion of a ‘signature’ in the form of a self-portrait adds an almost surreal touch.