James Pattison Cockburn St Martin on the Arve near Mont Blanc

An original 1816 watercolour painting, James Pattison Cockburn, St Martin on the Arve near Mont Blanc.

This splendid topographical drawing in brown ink and sepia wash by James Pattison Cockburn (1779–1847) shows a view of the small French hamlet of St Martin on the River Arve near Mont Blanc in the Savoy Alps.

Sited in the valley below Mont Blanc, the area held special significance for travellers at the beginning of the 19th century. The hamlet of St Martin—situated across the river from Sallanches—provided a halfway stop between Geneva and Chamonix. The Hotel du Mont Blanc at St Martin was a popular overnight stop for travellers in the 19th century who wished to take in the valley, in anticipation of the steep Mont Blanc ascent; a stop at Sallanches and St Martin provided many with their first clear view of the sublime massif.

J.M.W. Turner and John Ruskin both sketched at St Martin: Turner spending time in the area in the first decades of the 19th century (see, for example, Tate D04602), and Ruskin visiting repeatedly between the 1830s and 1880s. Ruskin wrote of the significance of the Hotel du Mont Blanc: 'The central example of the sort of house one went there to live in, was the Hotel du Mont Blanc at St Martin's; to me, certainly, of all my inn homes, the most eventful, pathetic, and sacred.'

James Pattison Cockburn was a military man and topographical artist—an army officer and watercolourist—who was taught drawing under Paul Sandby at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1793. Under Sandby's tutelage he learnt the skills required for topography, and this translated into an exacting drawing style, often in graphite, pen and brown ink, or sepia wash.

This drawing dates from a productive period following the end of the Napoleonic Wars when Cockburn could visit the Continent more frequently; in the period 1816–22 he produced a wealth of drawings in sepia of his travels in the Alps and elsewhere in Italy and Switzerland, whilst working for the English engraver and publisher William Bernard Cooke.

Provenance: William Drummond (Covent Garden Gallery, London)

In brown ink and sepia wash with faint graphite underdrawing. On watermarked 'J. Whatman 1813' wove paper.