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J.M.W.Turner - Switzerland
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2
1. The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804, watercolor
with scraping-out 98.5 x 68.5 cm
2. The Great Fall of Riechenback,in the Valley of Hasle,
Switzerland, 1804, 102 x 68 cm
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The above watercolor was
painted when he returned to England. The trees are excellent, and the geological
features are very well drawn, so is the behavior of the water, where it forms
into a fine spray at the foot of the waterfall.
The
dramatic scenery and weather effects of the Alps gave entirely new meaning to
Turner's concept of the 'Sublime' . His exploration of the Alps, villages and
passes of Switzerland enriched his imagination and upon return to his England he
made the fine watercolor above among many others.
After the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, Turner was able to travel
abroad for the first time. He experienced the Alps, and on his way there saw the huge numbers of
art treasures which Napoleon had amassed in Paris.
SWITZERLAND is a small European country known for its beautiful, snow-capped mountains and freedom-loving people. The Alps and the Jura Mountains cover more than half of Switzerland. But most of the Swiss people live on a plateau that extends across the middle of the country between the two mountain ranges. In this region are most of Switzerland's industries and its richest farmlands. Switzerland's capital, Bern, and largest city, Zurich, are also there.
Turner at the National Gallery of Ireland
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Cottage destroyed by an avalanche, 1812.
My painting after a Turner
- John Ruskin's words about
above painting:-
If the reader will look back for a moment to the
Abingdon, with its respectable country house, safe and slow
carrier's waggon, decent church spire, and nearly motionless
river, and then re-turn to this Avalanche, he will see the range
of Turner's sympathy, from the quietest to the wildest of
subjects. We saw how he sympathized with the anger and energy of
waves: here we have him in sympathy with anger and energy of
stones. No one ever before had conceived a stone in flight,
and this, as far as I am aware, is the first effort of painting to
give inhabitants of the lowlands any idea of the terrific forces
to which Alpine scenery owes a great part of its character, and
most of its forms. Such things happen oftener and in quieter
places than travelers suppose. The last time I walked up the Gorge
de Gotteron, near Fribourg, I found a cottage which I had left
safe two years before, reduced to just such a heap of splinters as
this, by some two or three tons of sandstone which had fallen on
it from the cliff. There is nothing exaggerated in the picture;
its only fault, indeed, is that the avalanche is not vaporous
enough. In reality, the smoke of snow rises before an avalanche of
any size, towards the lower part of its fall, like the smoke from
a broadside of a ship of the line.
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