Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen

Turner was among the most original landscape painters of the nineteenth century. In 1802 he visited the Swiss Alps, making more than four hundred drawings that he used for decades as source material for grand paintings. Turner captured the force of the famous waterfall at Schaffhausen by flattening thick paint with a palette knife, so that the water seems to have the solidity of the rocks whose shape it echoes. In the foreground, a mother rushes to protect her child from fighting cart horses; the scene provides local color, but also underscores the insignificance of human concerns before the power of nature—a romantic theme very much to Turner's taste.