3-017-328 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Fall of the Reichenbach", from the Farnley Hall Collection of drawings by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., 1865. Engraving of a photograph of a drawing. The subject '...has no adventitious or extrinsic interest: we select it only as a representation of a well-known and remarkable scene, and as one of the most powerfully-painted and impressive drawings of the series...Here we have the great fall and also several of the series of cascades by which the torrent gains the valley, far beneath, of Grindelwald. From the natural division of the scene, in the point of view chosen, into two nearly equal parallel masses, and the central position of the fall, arise a degree of symmetry rarely seen in Turner's compositions; yet, we are not sure that this does not give as it were a more epical fulness and framing to the story of the fall...Everything converges towards the torrent; everything leads the attention to track its course up to the mountain region where its mysterious source lies cradled in snow and swathed in mist, and whence, with growing strength, full of fierce young life, it escapes, bursting, with roar and shout, through the barriers of the giant precipices, which, with their proud phalanx of bristling pines'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.