Ludwig Hess

In 1785, he was enrolled as a member of Guild of the Ram, one of the Zünfte of Zürich, which included butchers and cattle merchants.

The painters Johann Heinrich Wüest and Salomon Gessner were his customers and, as early as 1778, he had begun taking lessons from Wüest.

In 1794, he decided to abandon his trade; making trips to Florence and Rome for further study.

Most of his early works were Alpine landscapes, notably of Mont Blanc, Rütli and the Tellskapelle and he was an early practitioner of topography.

In 2005, a previously unknown biography of him was discovered at the ETH Zürich, in the prints and drawings collection, among documents related to the landscape painter, Carl Gotthard Grass (1767–1814).