Johann Ludwig Aberli was a successful painter-entrepreneur. From 1766, sold coloured etchings of Swiss landscapes through his own publishing house in Bern and worked as a painter himself. Aberli's oil studies are among the first known studies executed in front of nature. The album bears the bookplate of James Forbes. Forbes travelled to Germany, Italy and Switzerland in 1796/97. He presumably acquired the oil sketches directly from the deceased painter's family and later had them bound into a book. Similarly, the Labruzzi drawing (cat. 93) was acquired from a travelling Englishman and combined with other drawings to an album.