Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps

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Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps
Artist	J. M. W. Turner
Year	1812
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	146 cm × 237.5 cm (57.5 in × 93.5 in)
Location	Tate Britain, London
Accession	N00490

Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps is an oil on canvas painting by

.

Content

The painting depicts the struggle of Hannibal's soldiers to cross the Maritime Alps in 218 BC, opposed by the forces of nature and local tribes. A curving black storm cloud dominates the sky, poised to descend on the soldiers in the valley below, with an orange-yellow sun attempting to break through the clouds. A white avalanche cascades down the mountain to the right. Hannibal himself is not clearly depicted, but may be riding the elephant just visible in the distance. The large animal is dwarfed by the storm and the landscape, with the sunlit plains of Italy opening up beyond. In the foreground, Salassian tribesmen are fighting Hannibal's rearguard, confrontations that are described in the histories of Polybius and Livy. The painting measures 146 × 237.5 centimetres (57.5 × 93.5 in). It contains the first appearance in Turner's work of a swirling oval vortex of wind, rain and cloud, a dynamic composition of contrasting light and dark that will recur in later works, such as his 1842 painting Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth.

Background

Turner saw parallels between

, one of the possible routes that Hannibal may have used to cross the Alps, which Turner had also visited in 1802.

Identifying Napoleon and France with Hannibal and Carthage was unusual: as a land power with a relatively weak navy, France was more usually identified with Rome, and the naval power of Britain drew parallels with Carthage. A more typical symbolism, linking the modern naval power of Britain with the ancient naval power of Carthage, can be detected in Turner's later works,

.

Composition

The irregular composition, without geometric axes or perspective, breaks traditional rules of composition. It is similar to Turner's 1800-2 watercolour,

to London in 1809, seeking support to oppose Napoleon.

Exhibition history

The painting was first exhibited at the

Royal Academy summer exhibition at Somerset House in 1812, accompanied in the catalogue with some lines from Turner's unfinished epic poem Fallacies of Hope

:

Craft, treachery, and fraud – Salassian force,
Hung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz'd
The victor and the captive, –

Saguntum

's spoil,
Alike, became their prey; still the chief advanc'd,
Look'd on the sun with hope; – low, broad, and wan;
While the fierce archer of the downward year
Stains Italy's blanch'd barrier with storms.
In vain each pass, ensanguin'd deep with dead,
Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd.
Still on Campania's fertile plains – he thought,
But the loud breeze sob'd, "Capua's joys beware!"

Turner insisted that the painting should be hung low on the wall at the exhibition to ensure it would be viewed from the correct angle. It was widely praised as impressive, terrible, magnificent and sublime.

The painting was left to the nation in the

Tate Gallery

in 1910.

• 
  J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, 1842

See also

• List of paintings by J. M. W. Turner

References

• Tate Gallery
• Tate Catalogue
• Tate illustrated companion
• Art in an Age of Bonapartism, 1800–1815, Albert Boime p. 111–116
• Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality In The Neolithic, Douglass Whitfield Bailey, p. 181–183
• Angel in the Sun: Turner's Vision of History Gerald E. Finley, p. 98–101
• The Poetics and Politics of Alpine Passage: Turner's Snowstorm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, Lynn R Matteson, The Art Bulletin, Vol.62, No.3 (Sept 1980) 385–398