Every spring as the ice melts at St. Gotthard's Pass in the Swiss Alps near Faido, it turns the Ticino River into a powerful torrent that carries rocks downstream. J. M. W. Turner traveled there on a tour of Switzerland in 1842 and made a rapid sketch that he showed to John Ruskin on his return to England. Ruskin promptly commissioned this finished watercolor, which he declared "the greatest work [Turner] produced in the last period of his art." When Ruskin visited the site, he was disappointed to find it far less dramatic than Turner’s depiction. “Turnerian topography,” he decided, conveyed a deeper truth about nature than any more literal rendering of the scene.
J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), The Pass of St. Gotthard, near Faido, 1843. Watercolor over graphite. Thaw Collection; 2006.52.