Switzerland

Zurich-born artist, watercolourist and art publisher Rudolf Dikenmann shaped the image of Switzerland for travellers and collectors with his highly finished aquatint views, printed in tints of black and blue and painstakingly coloured and finished by hand, sometimes resembling enamel painting. ‘The Zurich art publishing company of Rudolf Dikenmann (1793-1884) and his son Johann Rudolf Dikenmann (1832-1888) shaped the image of Switzerland... simply because of the sheer volume of the views produced in the Dikenmann studio. The ‘engravings’ were produced from sketched originals, using the aquatint technique. They came on to the market in their thousands: in petit or folio format, as vignettes on notepaper, as a simple black print or as a two-tone print in blue/black. Some of the high-quality typographic prints were coloured by hand by Dikenmann’s daughters Anna and Louise, and by his younger brother Johannes. Rudolf Dikenmann, who had worked for Peter Birmann in Basel after completing his apprenticeship with Orell Füssli & Co. in Zurich’ (Felix Graf, ‘The Image of Switzerland in the time of Gottfried Keller’, Swiss National Museum blog).

These four views, collected by a contemporary English traveller, are after designs by Heinrich Siegfried and comprise: Hôtel Baur au Lac de Zurich; Luzerne prise du Schweizerhof; Les Glaciers de Grindelwald and Lugano prise du pied du Mont Salvador.