Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix

executed in watercolour, showing the church of St Vincent, Les Planches, above Montreux, with the lake and the Dents du Midi mountains in the background

c.8 x 12cm, on paper, in a card mount, framed & glazed (overall size: c.15 x 21cm), traces of mounting with red wax on verso, inscribed on the back of the frame ("Genfersee mit Dent du Midi aus Charlotte Moscheles' Stammbuch"), book label of the Mendelssohn scholar Max Friedrich Schneider, small tear from an earlier mounting carefully repaired on verso

This painting derives directly from the family of Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny Hensel. 

for Mendelssohn's drawings of Montreux and Chillon, see: M. Crumb, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Oxford 1972, plates 26 & 27), and for the watercolour in Ms. M. Deneke Mendelssohn c.49. fol. 97: see P.W. Jones, Mendelssohn, An Exhibition to Celebrate the Life of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), (Oxford, 1997), item 69.

This watercolour is fresh, clear and detailed. It is quite small—smaller than the image in the printed catalogue (c.8 x 12cm). It is attached to a modern card mount and is held between two panes of glass (but without a proper wooden frame). The note of provenance to Charlotte Moscheles's album is on the back of this glass. There is a small tear from an earlier mounting at the lower left-hand corner, carefully repaired on verso.
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This is an unrecorded water-colour painting by Mendelssohn. 

Mendelssohn spent the summer of 1842 in Switzerland, a welcome break from his hectic concert schedule.  With his wife Cécile he went to Lausanne, where Lobgesang was performed.  On the 6 August he made a pencil sketch of the Château de Chillon, near Montreux (the Château itself is also just visible in this painting).  Mendelssohn probably sketched this view of the church of St Vincent (some 700 metres above Montreux) at around the same time and, as with that drawing, subsequently made a watercolour version.  He wrote to his mother on 18 August 1842: "Descriptions of Switzerland are impossible, and instead of keeping a diary as before, I am sketching furiously all the time...I must have at least one new sketch in my book every day..."