Walk by the Shores of Lake Lucerne

Walk by the Shores of Lake Lucerne was painted in 1881, when De Nittis was among the cosmopolitan European painters taking working trips to Switzerland. Lake Lucerne, surrounded by Alpine scenery, attracted tourists from across Europe, and its promenades offered De Nittis exactly the kind of subject — elegant figures in a distinguished natural setting — that he had mastered in Paris and London. The combination of leisure, fashion, and spectacular landscape placed the work within the well-established genre of the fashionable promenade scene, a staple of Impressionist subject matter from Renoir to Morisot. His ability to capture sunlight sparkling on Alpine lake water while maintaining the social observation of a cosmopolitan figure painter is characteristic of his multi-strand approach to Impressionist subject matter throughout this productive decade.

The composition balances fashionable promenading figures against the backdrop of lake and mountains. The water is rendered through horizontal broken strokes in blues and greens with flecks of white, while distant mountains dissolve in atmospheric haze giving depth without hard definition.