3-017-327 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Snowstorm on Mont Cenis", from the Farnley Hall Collection of drawings by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., 1865. Engraving of a photograph of a drawing, dated 1820, described by John Ruskin: 'The scene is on the summit of the pass, close to the hospice...This building, about 400 or 500 yards off, is seen in a dim, ashy grey, against the light, which, by help of a violent blast of mountain wind, has broken through the depth of clouds which hang upon the crags. There is no sky...nothing but this roof of drifting cloud; but neither is there any weight of darkness; the high air is too thin for it, all savage, howling, and luminous with cold, the massy bases of the granite hills jutting out here and there grimly through the snow wreaths. There is a desolate-looking refuge on the left...a diligence in front, whose horses, unable to face the wind, have turned right round with fright, its passengers, struggling to escape, jammed in the window; a little farther on is another carriage off the road, some figures pushing at its wheels and its driver at the horses' heads, pulling and lashing with all his strength, his lifted arm stretched out against the light of the distance, though too far off for the whip to be seen'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.