Painting Jugendstil-Pax Montana Hotel

This Week I am staying at the ‘Art Nouveau’ Hotel Paxmontana to paint the hotel and its surroundings. It was built in 1896 and is a listed building which has kept its charm and stylistic exterior. Easily distinguished by the detailed red and yellow balconies which adorn the entire exterior. Above you can see the finished painting, completed from room 301, which was my room for the week. It overlooks Sarnersee, the surrounding hills and Obwaldner mountains.

Painting Sarnersee 

Part of the project painting the Swiss historic hotels includes capturing their surrounding countryside or mountains. In this case, it was particularly interesting. As I passed around the other side of the lake, there was an unusual band of clouds just above the lake. Each cloud reflected the sunlight from the top and the bottom of it and seemed quite surreal. I don’t know if it happens frequently here but it was certainly a great moment to be painting.  Not long after painting the Sarnersee, I did a quick internet search only to discover that I am again, following in the footsteps of J.M Turner who was inspired to paint a watercolour you can see below. He has chosen a different viewpoint, but the mountains in the background of his watercolour do resemble the mountain range at the back of the sunset photo I took. It seems he was painting in the same direction. The sunset light also comes from the right-hand side of the lake, as in his painting, so this confirms my thoughts.