SIR ERNEST ALBERT WATERLOW RA PRWS (1850-1919)

Provenance

Private collection, purchased from the Royal Academy, 1916; to 2003

Condition

Original Frame

Literature

Royal Academy Illustrated, 1916, page 140

Exhibition History

London, Royal Academy, 1916, number 376

Description / Expertise

The most breathtakingly beautiful valley in Europe, the Lauterbrunnen basin is cut thousands of feet deep through ancient snow-capped mountain peaks, stretching to the horizon between magnificent sheer rock faces. Spectacular waterfalls spray down from high within the rock walls where mists and vapours spiral upward through the cool mountain air.

At the very beginning of his career, Ernest Waterlow, in the footsteps of the Pre-Raphaelite landscapists, made an artistic pilgrimage to Switzerland and the cliffs of Lauterbrunnen in the Oberland. John Ruskin had first expounded his passion for the valley in the forth volume of Modern Painters (published 1856) and encouraged artist to make the journey.

On his return to London in 1872, Ernest Waterlow, enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. Although he exhibited there almost every year, his subjects were chosen from closer to home, for example Galway Gossips, which was bought for the National Collection in 1887.

Sir Ernest Waterlow continued, however to reminisce over the haunting beauty of the Swiss Alps throughout his life, and particularly during the unsettling years leading up to and during the First World War. Between 1913 and 1916 at least nine of his twenty three exhibits at the Royal Academy were Swiss subjects. Following his striking work of 1914, Winter in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, Waterlow draws once more on the unique beauty of Lauterbrunnen for this work, which he titled with poignant lines from the 95th Psalm, In His Hands Are The Deep Places of the Earth. The tragedy of the war had given his beloved valley a deeper and more poetic significance.