Matterhorn

John Ruskin (1819-1900)
The Matterhorn from the north-east

Signed with initials and inscribed lower centre: State of snow on Matterhorn in 1849. {J.R, on the spot, Aug. 2nd}/Sketch never completed; but if I cut the margin away, I should make the angles false, inscribed lower left: Matterhorn. 2nd August. P. 163. I and numbered 3 upper right
Watercolour over pencil
24.2 by 33.7 cm., 9 1/2 by 13 1/4 in.

Provenance:
Given by Ruskin to his Drawing School Collection at Oxford but taken back by him in 1887;
W.H. Willink by 1912;
Anonymous sale, Bearne's, Torquay, 16th January 1991, lot ??;
Anonymous sale, Christie's, 26th September 2007, lot 243, where bought the present owner

Literature:
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), The Works of John Ruskin, 1903-1912: vol.5, 1904 (Modern Painters, vol.3), p.xxvII; vol. 6, 1904 (Modern Painters, vol. 4), pl.38 (right) and pp.283 and 288; vol. 21, 1906 (The Ruskin Collection of Oxford), p.278, no. 119; and vol. 38, 1912, (Catalogue of Ruskin's Drawings), p.267, no. 1121;
E.T. Cook, The Life of John Ruskin, 1911, vol. I, p.250;
Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehorse (eds.), The Dairies of John Ruskin 1848-1873, 1958, p.416, note 2

Exhibited:
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Sublime Inspiration: The Art of Mountains from Turner to Hillary, 1997, ex-catalogue

Engraved:
By J.C. Armytage for `Modern Painters', 1856, vol. 4, pl. 38

This important drawing is probably the first detailed study of the summit of the Matterhorn, a mountain that was not successfully climbed until 1865. Ruskin's annotation ` State of snow on Matterhorn in 1849' is fascinating showing his early interest in what we would now call `climate change.'

Ruskin's Swiss tour of 1849 was intended partly as a rest from his recent undertaking, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, which had been published in May and partly at preparation for further work on his Modern Painters. He arrived at Zermatt on 2 August and remained for a week, before returning to Chamonix. The present drawing was made the first day in Zermatt and Ruskin recorded in his diary: 'A lovely day with sharp north wind. Drawing Matterhorn. Then up to a bed of overhanging rocks which I thought were marble, but found to be a pure and lovely quartz rock in thin folia.' He wrote in more detail to his father, who had remained in Geneva, 'I had glorious weather, and on Friday… I got up to a promontory projecting from the foot of the Matterhorn and lay on the rocks and drew it at my ease. I was about three hours at work, as quietly as if in my study at Denmark Hill, though on a peak of barren crag above a glacier and at least 9000 feet above sea'. (Cook and Wedderburn, op. cit.)

On 9 August, just before leaving, Ruskin made another study of the mountain, from further east from the moat of the Riffelhorn. (now in the Guild of St George at Sheffield) . A third drawing from the same trip is now in the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard.

Ruskin made detailed descriptions and drawings of the Alps, including of the Matterhorn in Volume IV of Modern Painters, which he sub-titled 'Of Mountain Beauty'. He not only drew the mountain, but also took a number of photographs in order to check the accuracy of his studies He describes the 'Matterhorn or Mount Vervin [standing] on the whole unrivalled among the Alps, being terminated on two of its sides, by precipices which produce on the imagination nearly the effect of verticality' (Cook and Wedderburn, op. cit, p. 283). Despite various attempts, the first successful ascent of the Matterhorn did not take place until July 1865 and Ruskin's detailed drawings and photographs were intended to help the artist and the viewer fully understand the intrinsic nature and form of the mountain. The present drawing, along with the version in the Guild of St George, formed two halves of plate 38, in Modern Painters, which was engraved by J. C. Armytage, an engraver who Ruskin particularly favoured. The present drawing forms the right hand section.

Ruskin was fascinated by the effects of perspective on mountains and particularly on the Matterhorn, recording, 'No mountain in the Alps produces a more vigorous impression of peakedness than the Matterhorn. In Professor Forbes's work on the Alps, it is spoken of as an "obelisk" of rock... Naturally … we assume the mass to be a peak. However, Ruskin goes on to explain that the line we assume to be the steep slope of its side, is in fact 'a perspective line. It is in reality perfectly horizontal…more or less irregular and broken, but so
nearly horizontal that, after some prolonged examination of the data [he has] collected about the Matterhorn, [he is] at this moment in doubt which is its top. (Cook and Wedderburn, op. cit, p. 224). However, despite the scientific nature of Ruskin's study and his desire to capture the 'peakedness' of the Matterhorn, the romantic nature of the subject with its awe-inspiring dominance of its surroundings clearly captivated the artist.

Despite Ruskin's intention to continue work on Modern Painters in 1849, it was not until 1854 that he actually began working formally on it again and a further two years until volumes 3 and 4 were published. As James Deardon has noted, 'This long interval, however, did not dull Ruskin's impressions of Switzerland, so richly recorded in notes and drawings in 1849. Many a jotting in his notebooks was worked up into more formal prose, including some of the book's most famous purple passages, while the plates are often based on his Alpine sketches'.