Blick auf den Genfer See

'Blick auf den Genfer See' (View of Lake Geneva) by Sattler depicts the Alpine lake that was the most literary and aristocratically charged landscape in Europe—associated with Rousseau, Byron, Shelley, Voltaire, and countless other writers and artists who had lived or traveled on its shores. By 1904 Lake Geneva's landscape had been so thoroughly painted, written about, and photographed that Sattler's topographic view engaged with an already thoroughly mediated scenic tradition. The lake's extraordinary length—stretching from Geneva eastward to the Rhône glacier—provided an almost infinite variety of viewpoints.

The lake view is organized around the characteristic Alpine lake formula: calm water extending into the distance with mountain ranges framing both shores, the scale established through the graduated atmospheric diminishment of detail toward the horizon. Sattler's treatment of the lake's reflective surface shows his command of water as a spatial and chromatic element.