Travellers to the Alps have always been fascinated by glaciers. These vast rivers of ice, with their mysterious quality of being both solid and fluid, inspire awe and wonder. Early watercolour artists, such as the British painters William Pars and John Warwick Smith, stopped to paint glaciers on their journeys through the Alps, making compelling on-the-spot depictions of the dramatic ice-scapes.
The Aletsch Glacier in the Bernese Oberland, 1880, Charles Jones Way
image © John Mitchell Fine Paintings | All Rights Reserved
Local people rarely ventured on to glaciers, regarding them as inhospitable places, and dangerous to cross because of deep crevasses and steep ice-falls. But during the second half of the 18th century, growing interest in science and exploration encouraged more people to visit and investigate glaciers. Artists created views of Alpine mountains and glaciers as souvenirs for these travellers, often depicting tourists in the foreground of their pictures.
The ascent of Mont Blanc by John Auldjo’s party in 1827: Traversing a Gap in a Glacier, painted 1828, John Auldjo
Courtesy of The Alpine Club | Licence: All Rights Reserved
One important figure in the exploration of the Alps was the Swiss scientist and mountaineer, Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799). His tours of the Alps between 1767 and 1797 did much to bring this region to greater international attention. His celebrated ascents of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in western European, were illustrated in coloured prints showing his party’s perilous route through deeply crevassed glaciers.
Kinchin-jhow glacier with balanced rock, 1849, Joseph Dalton Hooker
Kew : Hooker Indian Sketches. Image © Board of Trustees, RBG Kew | All Rights Reserved
In recent times, glaciers have become obvious indicators of the effects of climate change. As a result of global warming, glaciers throughout the world are rapidly retreating. Comparisons of the way they look now with the watercolours made in the 18th and 19th centuries clearly reveal the extent of this loss. Scientists today are using the valuable record created by watercolour painters in the past as a way of measuring the earlier extent of glaciation in order to better understand the underlying factors for this decline.
View of an Iceberg, Fair Haven, Spitzbergen, August 18, 1773, after a sketch by Philippe d’Auvergne, painted 1773, John Cleveley, Jr.
© Trustees of the British Museum | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Click here to view more paintings of glaciers on our website.