Alexandre Calame Landscape Drawing Templates: L'Etude Du Paysage

Learn to draw landscapes by copying these fine art plates by the greatest swiss landscape painter of the 19th century.

Alexandre Calame (28 May 1810 – 19 March 1864) was a Swiss landscape painter who studied under landscape painter François Diday. By 1845 Calame was considered to have surpassed his teacher, Diday, in what was their shared speciality, grand Alpine views under stormy skies.

"The glaciers, emerald-green, white foaming mountain water, which split the trees during the storm, and the whipped clouds, the multi-colored rocks, half masked from fog, in the rays of the gleaming sun, are those things, which he knew to be true to nature. We still call them the Handeckfall from Bernese upper country, in Tirol, Lake Lucerne, the forest tower (in the urban museum of Leipzig), the forest stream (Dresdener gallery) etc."

These drawing plates were widespread in France, England, and Germany and are still today used to teach this style of painting. I totally support the point of view of French art teachers of the 19th century that fine art students need to study the rich traditions of the classical art.

French schools at that time advocated the following sequence of art education:

• Drawing copies of classical art plates
• Copying drawings by the Old Masters
• Drawing classical casts – busts and figures
• Drawing live models

Much the same you can study these fine art drawing plates, progress to master landscape drawings then to sight size & plein air landscape drawing.

Digitally restored you now have the opportunity to complete this lesson in landscape drawing from the swiss master.