Franz Schrader

Franz then found another job in a trading house run by one of his father's friends, a situation where he could devote more time to broadening his literary and scientific knowledge.

[1] In 1866, while staying with his friend Léonce Lourde-Rocheblave in Pau, he had a sort of revelation at the spectacle grandiose de la barrière montagneuse of the Pyrenees.

[1] While devoting the main part of his leisure to long hikes in the mountains, during which he gathered thousands of observations for his topographical records, he still found time to paint numerous panoramas of the Pyrenees as well as the Alps which he also studied,[2] and to acquire a solid formation in topography.

That map triggered such a sensation that it was included in the annual Mémoires of the Société des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles of Bordeaux with an explanatory text the following year.

The Club alpin français directory followed with the publication of an enthusiastic review, describing Schrader as qualified for "first rank topographer in a glorious master stroke".

On August 11, 1878, accompanied by high-mountain guide Henri Passet, he carried out the first known ascension of the Grand Batchimale (3,176 m), consequently renamed pic Schrader.

The scientific commission created by Franz Schrader in the Club Alpin Français still exists today, as well as the Société des Peintres de Montagne.