131. Alpine Scene.
133. Swiss Landscape.
I can offer no suggestion as to the identity of the places represented in these sketches, except that A Gorge may be one of the falls of the Reichenbach.
39. The Rainbow.
This is a strange drawing which I do not understand. The rainbow has only two colours, viz. yellow and crimson lake.
138. Ehrenbreitstein.
135. Alpine Stream.
The latter sketch contains an entrancing play of colour and suggestion. What a fine foundation for the airy structure raised above it that band of rich darkness makes which runs straight across the centre of the design! I suppose it represents loose rocks in shadow. Above them a range of mountains, faintly touched with crimson, rises out of the pale blue mist, with an opalescent sky above; on the right a cluster of white roofs carries the eye to a narrow defile. The foreground is just as elusive as the distance and middle distance. There are streams flowing among the stones, but those touches of white, are they birds or foam? And is that a figure on the right almost lost in the shadow of the rocks? What a beautiful dream it all is! And I cannot help wondering what earthly place suggested the dream. It reminds me vaguely of the neighbourhood of Bellinzona. Somewhere north of Lugano I fancy the happy wanderer might chance at daybreak upon some such scene as Turner has suggested.
130. Lake of Lucerne: Brunnen in the Distance ([Plate XX]).
There can be no doubt about the locality which furnished the motive of this lovely vision, though I believe some years ago the drawing was described as a “View on the Rhine.” There in the distance are the two Mythens; and there at the edge of the lake is Brunnen. The drawing must have been made at or near Treib, on the Lake of Lucerne.