Description
Mer de Glace follows a massive glacier winding through the foreground toward the center and right, enclosed by jagged mountain flanks. Turner makes the Mer de Glace a landscape of considerable physical weight, with the glacier’s route giving movement to the otherwise imposing terrain. The nearby forms and the mountains beyond make scale a principal part of the image’s experience.
Published on May 23, 1812, the print combines etching and mezzotint, with Turner credited as artist and publisher. This impression is the third of five states. The graphic medium brings a landscape of considerable physical extent into the limited space of a sheet. Its interest lies in that change of scale, allowing the viewer to encounter the glacier through a composed image while retaining the sense of terrain much larger than any human figure.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the J. M. W. Turner collection.
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