Eugène Devaud de Madelin
Born in Porsel (Fribourg (Switzerland) in 1906.
Died in Montreux (Switzerland) in 1993.
Swiss · Twentieth-century Swiss figurative landscape painting · views of Lake Geneva, Lavaux and the Alps.
A Swiss landscape painter active between Fribourg and the Lake Geneva region, Eugène Devaud de Madelin developed a figurative form of painting based on direct observation of places. The artist’s name Eugène de Madelin, attested by the Fribourg press, accompanies a body of work now identifiable mainly through signed oils and precisely located views.
The Galerie des Annonciades identifies him as a pupil of Jean-Charles Rambert, a painter and teacher associated with the École de dessin et des arts appliqués in Lausanne. After several years in Fribourg, Devaud settled around 1980 in Montreux, finding on the shores of Lake Geneva an environment particularly suited to his landscape practice.
The lake, the cultivated slopes of Lavaux, Villeneuve, Saint-Saphorin and the mountains closing the horizon are the most constant motifs in his documented work. The Dents du Midi, the Matterhorn, the Rochers de Naye and other Alpine reliefs appear in clearly structured compositions in which the breadth of the panorama, light, atmospheric variations and the dialogue between water and mountain take precedence over anecdote.
In 1972, he exhibited with Christian Henry at the Hôtel Duc Berthold in Fribourg. The presence of Lac Léman et Dents du Midi in the art collection of the City of Morges also documents the entry of his painting into the municipality’s public heritage.
The works by Eugène Devaud de Madelin presented by Swiss Art Gallery extend this artistic journey and take their place naturally within this corpus.
