Joseph Mallord William Turner

This small sheet holds a vast and turbulent view of Glencoe, a scenic river valley in the highlands of Scotland. Joseph Turner presents this sublime panorama as a vortex of color and light, his energetic brushstrokes mingled with minute details, such as the couple starting a fire in the foreground and the tiny figure-just a fleck of bright red-walking down a winding path to the right. As the boundaries between rock, sky, and raincloud blur, the grandeur of nature comes into sharper focus.

Turner’s watercolor practice was closely related to printmaking, and a large portion of his designs were eventually engraved for various publications. This watercolor was one of 40 designs intended to illustrate the published volumes of Sir Walter Scott's Prose Works, Tales of a Grandfather, 1834. Literary illustration afforded Turner the luxury of experimenting with dramatic landscape. He set out to represent not only the districts and places described in Scott's text, but also the mood of the tales.