John Brett's “The Glacier of Rosenlaui”

Abstract

Art in mid-nineteenth-century Britain has often been associated loosely with science. The minutely detailed style of early Pre-Raphaelitism in particular has been described as realist, factual, and objective—thus indicative of the era's respect for rational scientific investigation and its materialist conception of the world. John Brett's The Glacier of Rosenlaui of 1856 (Fig. 1) is representative of Pre-Raphaelite landscape, but in this case the linkage between science and art involves more than just general notions of scientific attitude and the careful observation of nature. Brett's work specifically illustrates a contemporary geological theory and demonstrates how such strictly scientific matters could be integrated with artistic concerns in Victorian England. It also reveals the passionate underpinnings of scientificism, the importance of John Ruskin's influence, and fundamental changes in British landscape painting in the 1850s.