The drawing was made during Ruskin's holiday in Switzerland and Italy in the summer of 1858, when one of his objects was to identify some of the subjects of Turner's watercolours in the National Gallery, which he was cataloguing. Having travelled leisurely through France, and thence to Basle, he came to Rheinfelden, where he spent a week in May. The present drawing was among those he did 'to show the exact modifications made by Turner as he composed his subjects', and was later reproduced as Plate 83 of the fifth and final volume of Modern Painters, published in 1860. The tour reached a dramatic climax at Turin in August, when his study of a painting by Veronese and the experience of a dismal service in a Waldensian chapel combined to bring about a profound change in his moral and aesthetic values. A drawing by Ruskin with the same provenance, of an Alpine River Valley, was sold in these Rooms 10 July 1990, lot 180