3-053-809 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Sunrise on the Watzmann, Berchtesgaden, Bavarian Alps", by Collingwood Smith, from the late exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, 1873. Engraving of a painting. 'In the midst of the Austrian Tyrol, or Salzkammergut, towers above all the neighbouring mountains the giant Watzmann...[which is] fitly called the "Mont Blanc" of this magnificently picturesque district; for when the snows of winter...[melt in the] summer the deep clefts of the crater-like summit of the double-horned head still glisten with virgin snow; whilst the porphyritic walls and buttresses beneath are so blanched by sun and storm that they present a lustrous aspect which would distinguish this from the surrounding heights, even if it did not command the pre-eminence by its superior altitude of 8250 ft...From the solemn waters of the Konigssee, the Watzmann, rising almost perpendicularly from its margin, is best seen; and when its summit, effulgent with the rays of sunrise, is reflected in the still waters of the lake, it is an object hardly exceeded in magnificence or beauty elsewhere...Its sides near the lake are concealed by vegetation down to the water's edge; but all above is naked rock, terminating in a two-horned summit of craterlike formation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.