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J.M.W.Turner - Switzerland
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1. The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804, Watercolour 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 watercolour 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 watercolours 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
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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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