Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm

In the late summer of 1836 Turner, past 60, crossed the Alps with a friend and patron, the Scottish landowner Hugh Munro of Novar, who left an account of the trip. Out of the sketches he brought home came this. He gathered three separate mountain terrors, a snowstorm, an avalanche and a thunderstorm, into one turning gust of paint, until the peaks, the valley of Aosta and the falling snow all dissolve into the same spiral. Look for the small dark break at the centre where the avalanche comes down; almost everything else is weather. When he showed it at the Royal Academy in 1837, some visitors could barely find the landscape in it. Munro, who had stood in those passes with him, is the man who bought it.