Mountains with Clouds

John Ruskin, one of the most influential art critics and theorists of the nineteenth century, was also a highly skilled landscape painter. This watercolor features a mountain shrouded in snow and clouds, with a small window of blue sky shining through. Ruskin produced many watercolors of Alpine rocks and peaks between 1844 and 1849, writing: "The hills are as clear as crystal, more lovely, I think, every day, and I don't know how to leave off looking at them." (Robert Hewison, Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. London, 2000, p. 149).