"The Mountain" is one of Balthus's most important early works. Completed in 1937, three years after the artist's first one-man exhibition, at age twenty-six, this majestic panorama is also his largest canvas and one of the few that depicts figures in a landscape. First exhibited in 1939 with the title "Summer," it remains the only completed painting in a projected cycle of the four seasons.

Painted in objective and exacting detail, the realistic figures and landscape seem at odds with the Surrealistically contrived narrative. Seven figures are located on an imaginary plateau near the top of the Niederhorn in the Bernese Oberland, a landscape familiar to Balthus since childhood. Either intentionally or unintentionally, the figures seem unaware of one another. Their gaze is trancelike and one young woman is actually asleep on the ground. While the connection between the figures is ambiguous, there is a direct correspondence between the shape and posture of each person and the surrounding mountain formations.

As a young man Balthus made the obligatory trip to Italy and France to study the work of the Old Masters, including Piero della Francesca, Nicolas Poussin, and Gustave Courbet. In this masterwork of his early years, Balthus pays homage to the strong simplified forms of della Francesca and the cultivated awkwardness of the figures of Courbet.

The artist (until 1939); [Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1939–82]

New York: Museum of Modern Art, ¦Large Scale Modern Paintings¦, April 1 - Mary 4, 1947. Checklist no. 18.

New York: Museum of Modern Art, ¦Balthus¦, 1957. Cat. no. 7.

New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery, ¦Balthus Paintings, 1929 - 1961¦, March 1962. Cat. no. 5, illus.

New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery, ¦Balthus¦, 1962. Cat. number 5.

Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New Gallery, Hayden Library, ¦Balthus¦, 1964. Cat. no. 6, illustr.

London, England: Tate Gallery, ¦Balthus¦, October 4 - November 10, 1968. Cat. no. 6, pg. 37, mentioned pg. 49 (illus.), Pgs. 14-15 discussed.

London, England: Arts Council of Great Britain, ¦Balthus¦, 1968. Cat.
no. 6.

Marseille, France: Musee Cantini, ¦Balthus¦, 1973. Cat. no. 4, illustr.

Italy: Venice Biennale 1980, ¦Balthus¦, No. 2, p. 20, illustr.

Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, ¦Les Réalismes 1919-1939¦, 1980-1981, p. 213, illustr.

Paris, France: Centre Georges Pompidou, ¦Balthus¦, November 4, 1983 - January 23, 1984, no. 15, pp. 138-139, illustr. in color.

New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, ¦Balthus¦, February 22, 1984 - May 13, 1984.

Japan: Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, ¦Balthus¦, June 18 - July 22, 1984.

Lausanne, France: Musée des Beaux-Arts, ¦Balthus¦, May 29-August 29, 1993. Catalogue by Leymarie, Jean, De Salis Jean Rudolphe, Starobinski, Jean and Zutter, Jörg. Geneva: Skira, cover.

New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ¦Painters in Paris 1895-1950¦, March 8 - December 31, 2000. Cat. p. 108-9.

Kyoto,Japan: Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, September 14-November 24, 2002; Tokyo: The Bunkamura Museum of Art, December 7, 2000 - March 9, 2003, Picasso and the School of Paris, Paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. plate 64, p.128-29, illus. in color.

Cologne, Germany: Museum Ludwig, August 18-November 4, 2007,
Balthus.

Bonnefoy, Yves. L'Improbable. Paris: Mercure de France, 1959, pp. 49-74 // 2nd edition: 1980, p. 48.

Jouve, Pierre Jean. Balthus, La Nef, Alger, septembre 1944, p. 144.

Klossowski de Rola, Stanislas. Balthus: Gemälde-Munich, Schirmer/Mosel 1983 // Balthus: paintings. Londres, éd. Thames & Hudson, 1983 // New York: éd. Harper & Row, 1983 // Balthus: peintures, Paris: éd. Harmann, 1983. Pl. 10-11.

Leymarie, Jean. Balthus. Translated by James Emmons. 2nd enl. illus. ed. New York: Skira/Rizzoli, 1982. Pp. 31-34, ill. pp. 32-33.

Leymarie, Jean, préface du catalogue de l'exposition Balthus, Biennale de Venise, Venise, éd. La Biennale di Venezia, Venise, 1980.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Notable Acquisitions, 1982-1983. p. 60, ill. in color.

Monnier, Virginie and Clair, Jean, eds. Balthus, catalogue raisonné of the complete works. New York: Abrams, 2000, p. 132, no. P102, illus.

Rewald, Sabine. Balthus. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983, pp. 82-83, cat. no. 14, illus. in color.

Rewald, Sabine. "Balthus's magic mountain" The Burlington Magazine, 139, September 1997, no. 1134, pp. 622-628.

William S. Lieberman, Modern Masters Manet to Matisse. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1975, no. 2, ill.

William S. Lieberman. Painters in Paris 1895-1950. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000: p. 108-9.