Abstract ID: 3.9732 | Accepted as Talk | Talk | TBA | TBA

In the summer of 1835, the Norwegian artist Thomas Fearnley (1802–1842) visited the Bernese Alps. On his route he seems to have been particularly interested in the advancing glaciers in the region. After making sketches of the glaciers of Rhone and Rosenlaui, he arrived at the Upper Grindelwald Glacier on the 17 August. Here he made a pencil drawing that would serve as the basis of one of his major works, The Grindelwald Glacier, completed in 1838.

At Fearnley’s time the two glaciers of Grindelwald reached all the way down to the bottom of the valley. As previously shown by dr. Heinz Zumbühl (2016), Fearnley’s drawing and painting hereby serves as a visual document of the glacier near its greatest extension. Today the painting of the once so grandiose glacier stands at a material witness to the Little Ice Age and a symbol of the climate crisis.

In this paper I will show how Fearnley built the composition from preliminary drawing to finished work. Using drawings, oil sketches and infrared photography I will reveal his compositional choices and demonstrate the interplay between reality and artistic license. Moreover, I will discuss how the context of early 19th century geological discourse and view of nature can increase our understanding of the painting, as well as Fearnley’s perception of the Alpine glaciers as a Nordic artist. With an ecocritical approach, I will address how the value of the artwork moves beyond the role as a historical document or an image of sublime scenery, but also serves as an interlocutor to the converse of human interaction with the mountain environment 200 years later.