Peder Mønsted

Galerie Paffrath, Düsseldorf
Purchased from the above by the present owner

This view of Campovasto to the east of St Moritz in the Engadin Valley in the Swiss Alps epitomises Mønsted’s photographically crisp winter landscapes. Having honed his skills at depicting snow in his native Denmark, the high Alps soon beckoned, and became the subject for a small number of large scale canvases. True to his paintings of verdant forests with streams running through them, here too his masterful observation of water and the reflections in it, in the form of a crystal clear mountain stream, is central to the composition.

Mønsted was born at Balle Mølle near Grenå, in Jutland, the son of a prosperous ship-builder. After receiving painting lessons at the art school in Aarhus, from 1875 to 1879 he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts with Niels Simonsen and Julius Exner, and under Peder Severin Krøyer. While visiting Paris in 1883, he worked in the studio of William Bouguereau, under whose tutelage he further honed his rigorous academic style which he applied to landscape.