Mountains of Switzerland: 1870s Watercolours
This watercolour forms part of a collection of pictures that we have for sale, principally depicting the landscapes of Switzerland between 1869 and 1876. The collection includes a painting of the vicarage at Tirley in Gloucestershire and a building at Halesowen in the West Midlands. The collection was likely painted by Joseph Frederick Hone, Vicar of Tirley (1801–1888), whose brother was Richard Brindley Hone, Rector at Halesowen, 1836 to 1881.
Joseph Hone was a well-educated ecclesiastical man, who studied at Winchester College and University College, Oxford, and was ordained as a priest in 1826, serving as Vicar of Tirley from 1827. In 1878 he published a book of poetry titled 'Switzerland and Other Poems'—a 122-page laudation of the Swiss landscape, which exemplifies the Romantic response elicited by Switzerland's sublime mountains in the 19th century.
The artist paints vertiginous slopes, dramatically filling the picture plane, and often provides a grand sense of scale by the inclusion of buildings, figures and animals. We get a real sense of the first-hand engagement with landscape, as well as the spiritual dimension of the artist's response, which is echoed in Hone's poem: 'Oft have I stood on verge of huge crevasse, / Which force of glacier arch hath rifted through—'... 'Sublime or beautiful, mysterious / In any way, not only as a whole, / But in each separate part—'...'thou dost invite / Search, though unsearchable and out of sight; / Like thy Great Cause...'.
Switzerland was a very popular destination for artists in the second half of the 19th century. The 1860s have been termed the Golden Age of Alpinism, with an impressive number of first ascents on magnificent summits, and new routes across the Alps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Austria. In 1870, a young John Singer Sargent was also painting in Switzerland, producing two Alpine sketchbooks of watercolours similar in subject and style to the present works. Stylistically Sargent's landscapes reflect techniques popularised in 19th-century art manuals, particularly John Ruskin's 'Elements of Drawing'; it is likely that our artist was also influenced by such theories, which encouraged careful attention to topography, colour and form.
These watercolours also chart the volume of ice present at Aletsch Glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps, in the 19th century, which has retreated by nearly two miles since the year 1870—stark evidence of the effects of climate change.
