About the Work
Friedrich Metz first took this little-used sketchbook with its variously coloured pages with him on hikes in Switzerland in July 1867, which led him to Saas-Fee, Stalden, Visp and Zermatt in the canton of Valais, then to Brunnen in the canton of Schwyz, and, finally, to Interlaken and Brienz in the canton of Bern. In April and May 1868, he used it again in Spain, where he stayed in Granada and Segovia, among other places (see Inv. SG 2760, Städel Museum, for further stages of the journey to Spain).
On both journeys, Metz mainly used the landscape sketchbook when he wanted to draw mountain landscapes and trees with a pencil. He made these studies, sometimes sketching out quickly, sometimes developing them further, with trees in close-up details, the landscapes often on a double page, as panoramic views of the Alps of Valais, Schwyz, Uri and Bern, and of the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra de Guadarrama. He noted down the names of prominent formations in his depictions, such as the Fee Glacier, the Mischabel Group, the Matterhorn and Gorner Glacier, the Mythen massif, Uri Rotstock, Mönch, Silberhorn and Mulhacén.
The changing colour of the paper in the book’s second half did not influence him in his drawings, just as he generally began to draw on pages opened at random, as can be discerned from the irregular dates. Instead, he appears to have structured the contents of his sketchbooks and at the same time used different sketchbooks for different subjects or motifs, see the book SG 2760 which he also used on his trip through Spain.
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
