Landscape near Saint-Ange

In 1858 the young Dutch painter Gerard Bilders travelled south with a few artist friends to paint outdoors in Savoy, the mountain country between France and Italy. Back home he was used to flat meadows and grazing cattle, so these peaks were unfamiliar ground. This view of a village called Saint-Ange comes out of that trip. The timing is worth knowing, because within a couple of years Savoy itself changed hands, passing from the Kingdom of Sardinia to France in 1860 after a local vote. The quiet valley Bilders had sketched was, right then, being redrawn on the map. He worked the studies up later in the Netherlands, still chasing the soft, warm grey light he cared about more than any mountain. In his output it is a rare visitor, a Savoy landscape from a painter the Dutch keep for their own low, wet fields.