Image viewing by Sabine Altorfer – this week: sophisticated sleigh ride from Wülflingen to Winterthur
We know winter pictures of princes and queens in richly decorated sleighs. But in Switzerland, when we think of sledges, we think of fun for children, of mountain farmers who use them to bring their hay down into the valley, or of tourist offers. But there was also pomp in this country.
“The Hirzel family’s sleigh ride from Wülflingen to Winterthur”. Copy by Ida Reinhart (1864–1917), 1908; after the original by Christoph Kuhn (1737–1792), 1759.
What an exotic move! But exotic is probably the wrong word, as the sledge convoy travels from Wülflingen to Winterthur. But she seems strange. Firstly because there is so much snow here in the lowlands and secondly because we only know horse-drawn sleighs as a tourist attraction from the mountains. But here pomp and fur is taken for a walk, on sleds like something out of a fantasy film: a swan and a billy goat form the bodies of the sled, on the top naked little figures dance and toast into the cold landscape.