Alfred Rehfous returned to Switzerland a year later and explored Valais in the spring of 1890.

Alfred Rehfous returned to Switzerland a year later and became acquainted with Valais in the spring of 1890. There he lived in Savièse with painter friends such as Ernest Biéler (1863-1948), Henry van Muyden (1860-1936), John-Pierre Simonet (1860-1915) and Otto Vautier (1863-1919).

Alfred Rehfous' proximity to these figures links him to the Savièse school, a term commonly used for the twenty or so artists who followed in Biéler's footsteps in the Valais between 1880 and around 1930. In Savièse and elsewhere, these artists were concerned with depicting customs and traditions, rural life and the regional alpine environment, promoting the development of the idyllic image of a canton perceived as a lost paradise.

While his peers endeavored to depict the locals and exploited stereotypical motifs such as traditional dress in certain villages, Alfred Rehfous distinguished himself through an almost exclusive practice of landscape painting. Far from the rural genre scenes that pervade the productions of most other artists of the unique phenomenon of the School of Savièse, Rehfous paints - not without great topographical attention - peaks, moraines, alpine pastures and rock faces that are components of the mountain landscapes typical of the canton of Valais. The exhibition focuses on a selection of landscapes painted by Alfred Rehfous during his time in Valais, from the Lower Valais to the Saas Valley.


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