It is generally believed that this description of snowy conditions and the accompanying sketches relate to Turner’s return journey across the Mont Cenis pass in January 1820.
2 The weather in northern Italy was unusually cold at this time and contemporary witnesses noted the excessive amount of snow which fell upon the mountain.
3 More particularly, the art historian and Turner scholar James Hamilton has suggested that they record a particularly dramatic moment during the artist’s travels when his coach was overturned amid the mountains and he was obliged to walk in the snow as far as Lanslebourg.
4 Turner later immortalised the experience in a dramatic watercolour,
Snowstorm, Mont Cenis 1820 (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery) which he inscribed with the date of the incident, ‘15 January 1820’.
5 The details recounted here do not really accord with the reported facts of the ordeal which required the artist and his fellow travellers to climb out of the window of the carriage and to avoid becoming involved in a fight between their driver, guide and the local
cantonnier (see the introduction to the sketchbook).
6 Nevertheless, the description is likely to date from the same crossing of the Mont Cenis pass and the rough character of the draughtsmanship testifies to the difficult conditions faced by travellers in the Alps. Furthermore, Turner scholar Cecilia Powell has noted that the composition of
Snowstorm, Mont Cenis watercolour includes a visual motif derived from one of the sketches on this page, specifically ‘the dramatic effect of a dark house seen against a backdrop of white snow’.
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