Joseph Mallord William Turner - Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la diligence) in a snow drift upon Mount Tarrar - 1829

Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la diligence) in a snow drift upon Mount Tarrar - 22nd of January, 1829; night scene with figures huddled around large fire to right, discarded spades and an axe in left foreground. 1829

In 1828 Turner made his third visit to Italy. This was during a period of increased exploration of the use of vibrant colour in his work and, unlike on his previous visits, when he made meticulous sketches of the monuments and atmospheric colour-washed sketches, he concentrated instead on producing a series of oils, which he exhibited in his rooms in Rome. Anxious to return to commitments in London, he left Italy in January and experienced a crossing of the Alps so disastrous that he swore he would never leave so late in winter again. He had already survived one terrifying crossing of Mt Cenis, returning from Italy a decade earlier, which he vividly recorded in a much smaller watercolour for Walter Fawkes showing his carriage careering along a mountain road, cut off from its baggage wagon by a fall of rocks and snow, the vortex of a great storm swirling beyond (W 402). Fawkes's small watercolour record of the earlier experience bore echoes of Turner's fascination with Hannibal's legendary crossing of the Alps, but his 1829 passage over Mt Tarrar was less life-threatening and of a more personal, wet and miserable nature. Nevertheless, he recorded it on such a scale - the size of a large oil painting - as to monumentalise the experience for posterity, an experience he recounted in February in a letter to Charles Eastlake:

". . . the snow began to fall at Foligno, tho' more of ice than snow, that the coach from its weight slide about in all directions, that walking was much preferable, but my innumerable tails would not do that service so I soon got wet through and through, till at Sarre-valli the diligence zizd into a ditch and required 6 oxen, sent three miles back for, to drag it out . . . consequently half starved and frozen we at last got to Bologna .... But there our troubles began instead of diminishing ... all bad til Firenzola being even the worst for the down diligence people had devoured everything eatable (Beds none) . . . crossed Mont Cenis on a sledge - bivouaced in the snow with fires lighted for 3 Hours on Mont Tarate while the diligence was righted and dug out, for a Bank of Snow saved it from upsetting - and in the same night we were again turned out to walk up to our knees in new fallen drift to get assistance to dig a channel thro' it for the coach, so that from Foligno to within 20 miles of Paris I never saw the road but snow!"

Source: British Museum