This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(September 2022) |
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps | |
---|---|
Artist | J. M. W. Turner |
Year | 1812 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 146 cm× 237.5 cm(57.5 in× 93.5 in) |
Location | Tate Britain, London |
Accession | N00490 |
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps is an oil on canvas painting by J. M. W. Turner, first exhibited in 1812. Left to the nation in the Turner Bequest, it was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1856, and is now held by the Tate Gallery.
The painting depicts the struggle of Hannibal's soldiers to cross the Maritime Alps in 218 BC, opposed by the forces of nature and local tribes. A curving black storm cloud dominates the sky, poised to descend on the soldiers in the valley below, with an orange-yellow Sun attempting to break through the clouds. A white avalanche cascades down the mountain to the right. Hannibal himself is not clearly depicted, but may be riding the elephant just visible in the distance. The large animal is dwarfed by the storm and the landscape, with the sunlit plains of Italy opening up beyond. In the foreground, Salassian tribesmen are fighting Hannibal's rearguard, confrontations that are described in the histories of Polybius and Livy. The painting measures 146 × 237.5 centimetres (57.5 × 93.5 in). It contains the first appearance in Turner's work of a swirling oval vortex of wind, rain and cloud, a dynamic composition of contrasting light and dark that will recur in later works, such as his 1842 painting Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth .
Turner saw parallels between Hannibal and Napoleon, and between the historic Punic War between Rome and Carthage and the contemporary Napoleonic Wars between Britain and France. The painting is Turner's response to Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Napoleon Crossing the Alps , of Napoleon leading his army over the Great St Bernard Pass in May 1800, which Turner had seen during a visit to Paris in 1802. Turner set his painting in the Val d'Aosta, one of the possible routes that Hannibal may have used to cross the Alps, which Turner had also visited in 1802.
Identifying Napoleon and France with Hannibal and Carthage was unusual: as a land power with a relatively weak navy, France was more usually identified with Rome, and the naval power of Britain drew parallels with Carthage. A more typical symbolism, linking the modern naval power of Britain with the ancient naval power of Carthage, can be detected in Turner's later works, Dido Building Carthage , and The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire .
The irregular composition, without geometric axes or perspective, breaks traditional rules of composition. It is similar to Turner's 1800-2 watercolour, Edward I's Army in Wales , painted to illustrate a passage from the poem The Bard by Thomas Gray, in which an army marches diagonally across the painting through a mountain pass, and is assailed by an archer to the left of the painting. Turner sketched out the foreground figures as early as 1804, and had observed an impressive storm from Farnley Hall, the house of Walter Fawkes in Yorkshire, in 1810; making notes on the back of a letter, he remarked to Fawkes' son Hawkesworth that its like would be seen again in two years, and it would be called "Hannibal crossing the Alps". Turner may also have been inspired by a lost oil painting of Hannibal's army descending the Alps into northern Italy by watercolourist John Robert Cozens, A Landscape with Hannibal in His March over the Alps, Showing to His Army the Fertile Plains of Italy, the only oil painting that Cozens exhibited at the Royal Academy, and also an entry in list of imaginary paintings written by Thomas Gray, which speculated that Salvator Rosa could have painted "Hannibal passing the Alps". Another spur to make the painting could have been the visit of a delegation from the Tyrol to London in 1809, seeking support to oppose Napoleon.
The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition at Somerset House in 1812, accompanied in the catalogue with some lines from Turner's unfinished epic poem Fallacies of Hope :
Craft, treachery, and fraud – Salassian force,
Hung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz'd
The victor and the captive, – Saguntum's spoil,
Alike, became their prey; still the chief advanc'd,
Look'd on the sun with hope; – low, broad, and wan;
While the fierce archer of the downward year
Stains Italy's blanch'd barrier with storms.
In vain each pass, ensanguin'd deep with dead,
Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd.
Still on Campania's fertile plains – he thought,
But the loud breeze sob'd, "Capua's joys beware!"
Turner insisted that the painting should be hung low on the wall at the exhibition to ensure it would be viewed from the correct angle. It was widely praised as impressive, terrible, magnificent and sublime.
The painting was left to the nation in the Turner Bequest in 1856, and held by the National Gallery until it was transferred to the Tate Gallery in 1910.
Hannibal was a Carthaginian general and statesman who commanded the forces of Carthage in their battle against the Roman Republic during the Second Punic War.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. He left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.
The Chevin is the ridge on the south side of Wharfedale in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, overlooking the market town of Otley, and often known as Otley Chevin.
John Robert Cozens was a British draftsman and painter of romantic watercolour landscapes.
The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, painted in 1838 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839.
Henri-Paul Motte was a French painter from Paris, who specialised in history painting and historical genre.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps is a series of five oil on canvas equestrian portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. Initially commissioned by the King of Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St Bernard Pass in May 1800.
Bonaparte Crossing the Alps is a 1848–1850 oil painting by French artist Paul Delaroche. The painting depicts Napoleon Bonaparte leading his army through the Alps on a mule, a journey Napoleon and his army of soldiers made in the spring of 1800 in an attempt to surprise the Austrian army in Italy. Several versions of this painting exist: in the Louvre- Lens and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, England. Queen Victoria owned a small version of it.
The Battle of the Rhône Crossing was a battle during the Second Punic War in September of 218 BC. Hannibal marched on the Italian Alps, and an army of Gallic Volcae attacked the Carthaginian army on the east bank of the Rhône. The Roman army camped near Massalia. The Volcae tried to prevent the Carthaginians from crossing the Alps and invading Italy.
Alexander Cozens (1717–1786) was a British landscape painter in watercolours, born in Russia, in Saint Petersburg. He taught drawing and wrote treatises on the subject, evolving a method in which imaginative drawings of landscapes could be worked up from abstract blots on paper. His son was the artist John Robert Cozens.
Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in 218 BC was one of the major events of the Second Punic War, and one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare.
Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba is an oil painting by Claude Lorrain, in the National Gallery, London, signed and dated 1648. The large oil-on-canvas painting was commissioned by Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne, Duc de Bouillon, general of the Papal army, together with Claude's Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, also now in the National Gallery. It depicts the departure of the Queen of Sheba to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem, described in the tenth chapter of the First Book of Kings. A more usual subject would be their meeting; this is one of many harbour scenes painted by Claude. The Queen is departing from a city with classical buildings, with the early morning Sun lighting the sea, as vessels are loaded.
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834 is the title of two oil on canvas paintings by J. M. W. Turner, depicting different views of the fire that broke out at the Houses of Parliament on the evening of 16 October 1834. They are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art.
Dido building Carthage, or The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire is an oil on canvas painting by J. M. W. Turner. The painting is one of Turner's most important works, greatly influenced by the luminous classical landscapes of Claude Lorrain. Turner described it as his chef d'oeuvre. First exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1815, Turner kept the painting until he left it to the nation in the Turner Bequest. It has been held by the National Gallery in London since 1856.
Snow Storm, or Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, is a painting by English artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) from 1842.
In 1842, British artist J. M. W. Turner painted three watercolours of the Rigi, a mountain in the Alps in Central Switzerland, which he had visited the previous summer. Widely regarded as some of his finest works, the watercolours capture the transitory effects of light and atmospheric conditions at the Rigi. According to John Ruskin, "Turner had never made any drawings [watercolours] like these before, and never made any like them again ... He is not showing his hand in these, but his heart."
War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet is an oil painting of 1842 by the English Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). Intended to be a companion piece to Turner's Peace - Burial at Sea, War is a painting that depicts a moment from Napoleon Bonaparte's exile at Saint Helena. In December 1815, the former Emperor was taken by the British government to the Longwood House, despite its state of disrepair, to live in captivity; during his final years of isolation, Napoleon had fallen into despair. Turner's decision to pair the painting with Peace was heavily criticized when it was first exhibited but it is also seen as predecessor to his more famous piece Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1844).
The Wrath Of The Seas is an 1886 painting by Russian artist Ivan Aivazovsky. Oil on canvas, it measures 70.1 × 110 cm, and is held in a private collection.
Moonlight, a Study at Millbank is an oil painting by J. M. W. Turner, painted c. 1797. The nocturne is painted in oils on a mahogany board which measures 31.4 cm × 40.3 cm. It has been held by the Tate Gallery since 1910.
Peace – Burial at Sea is a painting in oils on canvas by the English Romantic artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), first exhibited in 1842. The work is a memorial tribute to Turner's contemporary the Scottish painter Sir David Wilkie (1786–1841). The canvas depicts Wilkie's burial at sea. This work was intended as a companion piece to War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet which alludes to the sordid demise of the former Emperor of France Napoleon Bonaparte. The two works are characterized by sharply contrasting colors and tones: War utilizes a strident yellow and red while Peace is painted a cool blend of white, blue and black.