Mountain Rock and Alpine Rose

One of Ruskin’s most beautiful early drawings, this was probably brought to completion on the spot, almost certainly in the region of Chamonix in 1844 or 1849. The pencil under-drawing is quite hasty, with the rocks and trees outlined in ink, but only simple watercolour wash and a little red chalk added. The delicate scratching-out and placing of bodycolour, to indicate the red blossom of the Alpine rose, may have been done later.

A diary entry for 28 June 1849 describes ‘a long scramble’ up to the Cascade des Pèlerins near Chamonix, where he ‘got some pines, in Dag[uerreotype], then finished my drawing successfully.’ Moving along to a gorge under the Glacier des Bossons, Ruskin enthused over ‘the Alpine rose clinging to its warm and tiger striped crags, the pines above stretching their arms over one’s heads like nets.’