Oil paint on canvas
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-brett-53" aria-label="More by John Brett" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">John Brett</a>
Glacier Rosenlaui
Purchased 1946
Alps
cloud
countries and continents
education, science and learning
geology
glacier
landscape
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
mountain
natural features (non-UK)
places
rocky
Rosenlaui Glacier
Ruskin, John, ‘Modern painters’, 1843-1860
society
sunshine
Switzerland
weather
<p>The Rosenlaui glacier is at the foot of two spectacular Alpine peaks, including the Dossenhorn, and yet they are not the focus here. Instead Brett makes a meticulous study of different types of rocks and pebbles, offset by the dense blue white folds of the glacier itself. This attention to the detail as well as enormity of nature reflects the critic John Ruskin’s sentiment that a small stone was ‘a mountain in miniature’. Brett had travelled to Switzerland after reading Ruskin’s <i>Of Mountain Beauty</i> and met the artist John William Inchbold who influenced him to ‘paint all I could see’.</p><p><b>From William Wordsworth, ‘The Prelude’, Book 6, Cambridge and the Alps, 1850</b></p><p>... The immeasurable heightOf woods decaying, never to be decayed,The stationary blasts of waterfalls,And in the narrow rent at every turnWinds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-sideAs if a voice were in them, the sick sightAnd giddy prospect of the raving stream,The unfettered clouds and regions of the</p><p>Heavens,Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light –Were all like workings of one mind, the featuresOf the same face, blossoms upon one tree;Characters of the great Apocalypse,The types and symbols of Eternity,Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.</p><p><em>Gallery label, March 2010</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
12 February 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
12 February 2004 – 3 May 2004
2004-05-03
2004-02-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
11 June 2004 – 5 September 2004
2004-09-05
2004-06-11
Alte Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany)
28 September 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
2004-09-28
Fundació “la Caixa” (Madrid, Spain)
2004-02-12
Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature
Exhibition
22 May 2006 – 7 January 2007
2007-01-07
22 May 2006 – 3 September 2006
2006-09-03
2006-05-22
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery (Norwich, UK)
http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk
23 September 2006 – 7 January 2007
2007-01-07
2006-09-23
Millennium Gallery (Sheffield, UK)
http://www.sheffieldgalleries.org.uk
2006-05-22
Art at the Rockface
Loan-out
12 February 2009 – 4 October 2009
2009-10-04
12 February 2009 – 3 May 2009
2009-05-03
2009-02-12
Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, USA)
http://ycba.yale.edu/index.asp
16 June 2009 – 4 October 2009
2009-10-04
2009-06-16
Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, UK)
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
2009-02-12
Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts
Loan-out
12 September 2012 – 31 January 2014
2014-01-31
17 February 2013 – 19 May 2013
2013-05-19
2013-02-17
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
10 June 2013 – 22 September 2013
2013-09-22
2013-06-10
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
25 January 2014 – 6 April 2014
2014-04-06
2014-01-25
Mori Arts Centre (Tokyo, Japan)
19 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
2014-04-19
Palazzo Chiablese (Turin, Italy)
2012-09-12
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Exhibition
17 February 2013 – 31 August 2014
2014-08-31
17 February 2013 – 19 May 2013
2013-05-19
2013-02-17
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
10 June 2013 – 13 October 2013
2013-10-13
2013-06-10
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
25 January 2014 – 6 April 2014
2014-04-06
2014-01-25
Mori Arts Centre (Tokyo, Japan)
19 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
2014-04-19
Palazzo Chiablese (Turin, Italy)
2013-02-17
Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
Loan-out
26 March 2015 – 27 May 2020
2020-05-27
26 March 2015 – 21 June 2015
2015-06-21
2015-03-26
Museo Nacional de Arte (Mexico City, Mexico)
18 July 2015 – 18 October 2015
2015-10-18
2015-07-18
Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo, Brazil)
27 November 2019 – 27 May 2020
2020-05-27
2019-11-27
Hong Kong Museum of Art (Hong Kong, China)
2015-03-26
British Landscape
Tate partnerships & programmes
11 May 2016 – 25 September 2016
2016-09-25
11 May 2016 – 25 September 2016
2016-09-25
2016-05-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2016-05-11
Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the modern age
Exhibition
14 December 2018 – 19 September 2021
2021-09-19
14 December 2018 – 28 April 2019
2019-04-28
2018-12-14
National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, Australia)
19 June 2019 – 6 October 2019
2019-10-06
2019-06-19
Palazzo Reale (Milan, Italy)
2018-12-14
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Tate partnerships & programmes
9 November 2020 – 18 July 2021
2021-07-18
9 November 2020 – 18 July 2021
2021-07-18
2020-11-09
Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France)
2020-11-09
The Origins. The rise and fall of Nature at the age of Darwin
Loan-out
14 September 2024 – 6 January 2025
2025-01-06
14 September 2024 – 6 January 2025
2025-01-06
2024-09-14
Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens (San Marino, USA)
http://www.huntington.org
2024-09-14
Storm Cloud: Art, Science, Nature and the Industrial Age
Loan-out
Glacier of Rosenlaui
support: 445 × 419 mm
frame: 690 × 603 × 71 mm
Purchased 1946
<p>Brett spent the summer of 1856 at Rosenlaui in Switzerland.  He was inspired to take the trip after reading the fourth volume of Ruskin's <i>Modern Painters</i>, entitled 'Of Mountain Beauty'. In Switzerland he encountered another <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/pre-raphaelite" title="Glossary definition for 'Pre-Raphaelite'"><span>Pre-Raphaelite</span></a> follower, J.W. Inchbold, who was working on a picture of the Jungfrau.  This chance encounter had a decisive effect on Brett's own art, and he wrote in his diary, '[I] saw him do a few touches to his jung-frau and there and then saw that I had never painted in my life, but only fooled and slopped and thenceforth attempted in a reasonable way to paint all I could see' (Brett Diary, 9 December 1856, quoted in Parris, p.147).

</p><p>In addition to Inchbold's influence, the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> reflects Brett's reverence for Ruskin's theories on the laws of beauty and also his own lifelong interest in geology. In the centre foreground is a boulder of granite and beyond it a block of gneiss with its characteristic curving folds, so admired by Ruskin. Every rock and pebble has been painted in intricate detail, following Ruskin's dictum that a small stone could be likened to a pearl or to 'a mountain in miniature' (E.T. Cook and A.D.O. Wedderburn (eds), <i>The Works of John Ruskin</i>, vol.IV, 1902-12, pp.367-8).  Despite its close attention to detail, the picture offers a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/sublime" title="Glossary definition for 'Sublime'"><span>sublime</span></a> vision of nature. We are made to reflect on the enormous power of the glacier, a huge mass of steely-white snow and ice, pushing away stones and upending boulders that lie in its wake.  It stretches back into a misty distance, where the tops of mountains are just visible, but where no man could survive for any length of time.

</p><p>Soon after Brett returned from Switzerland, the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti saw <i>The Glacier of Rosenlaui</i> in his studio and took it to show Ruskin.  Ruskin was apparently delighted with the picture and conveyed 'expressions of pleasure and praise' (Brett Diary, 9 December 1856, quoted in Parris, p.147) to the artist.

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Leslie Parris (ed), <i>The Pre-Raphaelites</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1984, reprinted 1994, pp.146-7, no.79, reproduced p.146.<br/>Elizabeth Prettejohn, <i>The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites</i>, London 2000, p.254, reproduced p.253, in colour.<br/>Christopher Wood, <i>Victorian Art</i>, London 1999, p.135, reproduced p.135, in colour.

</p><p>Frances Fowle<br/>December 2000

</p><p></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>The art critic John Ruskin praised JMW Turner’s pictures of the French Alps and encouraged John Brett to observe and paint them. In the mid-19th century, new scientific understandings of ancient, natural processes in the earth began to inform images of the mountains. Many tried to reconcile scientific ideas with existing Christian beliefs. Glaciers were interpreted as God’s means of sculpting the earth and this work suggests the Biblical Flood.</p>
</div>

Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
Alps cloud countries and continents education, science and learning geology glacier landscape literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) mountain natural features (non-UK) places rocky Rosenlaui Glacier Ruskin, John, ‘Modern painters’, 1843-1860 society sunshine Switzerland weather