Painted by French artist Charles-Henri Contencin (1898-1955), the oil on board shown here was identified by UK auction house Cheffins as depicting a Swiss mountain scene, more specifically the Dent Blanche mountain with the view taken from the Balcon du Val d’Herens. And as luck would have it, a collector who saw the painting just happened to own a property near the mountain and thought he’d quite like to own the painting – which is how it came to achieve one of the highest prices ever achieved at auction for Contencin, when it outstripped its estimate of around $4000 to be knocked down for $37,400. It did not, however, end up in the hands of the collector, who suffered the fate of being the underbidder to a UK dealer.
Charles-Henri Contencin was trained as an architect and draughtsman but his real passion was in the Alpine peaks and the light of the mountains. He began to paint and climb in the Savoie and Berner Oberland from an early age and even while employed by the French railways he ended up commissioning works of art for their respective companies. Technically an amateur painter, he was an active member of the Paris-based Society of Mountain Painters from 1929 and his paintings, recognised for the subtle capture of light, were displayed regularly in regional and national exhibitions.
