Alpine Landscape with Chalets

Dimensions · 8.5 × 11.5 in (sight) · 16.5 × 19.5 in (framed)
Material · Oil on canvas
Frame · Original to the piece. Limed hardwood, gold fillet, linen liner. Cut for this canvas.
Era · Undated. A commercially prepared 9 × 12 canvas on size-stamped stretcher bars.
Origin · Not recorded. Signed "Moretti" lower left. The maker's stamp on the back rail is Mexican — that places the frame, not the painting.
Condition · The paint is bright and stable, the impasto crisp. The limed finish shows light handling wear at the corners, and the linen liner has faint spotting at the lower right — the ordinary marks of a picture that has hung a long time.

Three limestone spires still hold the light while the valley beneath them has already gone blue. A stand of black firs, two farm buildings with broad overhanging eaves, a meadow running down to water the colour of glacier melt. The peaks are built up in palette-knife strokes thick enough to throw their own shadow across the canvas — hold it at an angle and the ridge lines stand proud of the surface. The chalets get the opposite treatment, drawn fine, down to the shutters and the dark mouth of a doorway.

Take it off the wall and the back settles the question of the frame. The stretcher bars carry impressed size stamps — a 9 on the short rails, a 12 on the long — and the frame's own back rail is pencilled 9 x 12 in the framer's hand. Measured through the opening, the canvas comes to 8.5 by 11.5 inches, which is a 9 by 12 with a quarter inch tucked under the rebate on all four sides. Three marks, made by three different hands, all agreeing. This frame was cut for this picture. It was not fitted to it afterwards.

We photograph the back of every painting, because the back is where a picture keeps its paperwork. This one's is all there: the framer's pencil note, a maker's stamp, stretcher bars stamped to size, joints nobody has opened. The signature in the lower left reads Moretti — a name with no biography attached to it — sitting just where the water meets the bank.

Delivery · A detailed video of this piece is available upon request. Pickup, local delivery and shipping for works of art are outlined in our Store Policies — please review before you purchase. Contact hello@sojournvintage.com with any questions.