Historic:

Founded in 1898 by the geographer-alpinist and artist Franz Schrader under the patronage of the French Alpine Club, the Society of Mountains Painters has the role to promote the quality and diversity of visual works inspired by the mountains.

On 25 November 1897, Franz Schrader, the vice-president of French Alpine Club organized there a conference entitled "What is the beauty of the mountains?". It was his true aesthetic credo. Schrader announced the imminent establishment of a school dedicated to cultivate painting of French mountains.

"The religious scenic beauty of the mountains was often denied by painters. The mountain cannot be painted, one may hear sometimes (less often than before, but still too often). There is seems a bunch of misunderstandings, and I would try to stop here for a moment. In its complete freedom, the Alpine Club tries to establish a school to paint French mountains. What are conditions of the mountain painting, both favorable and unfavorable? Firstly, quit your studio or lowland plain-air to arrive in front of the whiteness of high tops, to find yourself in a new world. You will become new person there."