Mer de Glace, Chamonix, with Blair's Hut, 1806 (pencil, watercolour, scraping on wove paper)

The Mer de Glace, the second largest glacier in the Alps, is named for its resemblance to a frozen sea. Standing on the ice, Turner was clearly awed by the scale of the jagged peaks and the wild untamed scenery. Abandoning any framing device in this composition, he allows the terrain to disappear off the edges of the sheet. Bands of cool and warm colour give a feeling of recession, while a tiny eagle soaring over the valley below emphasises the vastness of the landscape. The work was commissioned by Walter Fawkes, who owned five watercolours of the Mer de Glace region inspired by Turner’s 1802 tour.