Mer de Glace, Chamonix, France, 1860 (pencil, w/c, bodycolour, pen & ink on paper)

Chamonix in the Alps was a place particularly close to Ruskin's heart, and between 1842 and 1874 he was a frequent visitor there. One of Ruskin's great interests was geology and the Chamonix area was a significant area for geological study; in 1875 he wrote in Deucalion that the ten and a half mile stretch between Cluses and Chamonix presented "more decisive and trenchant questions representing mountain structure than all the philosophers of the world could answer". Ruskin always returned to the Alps when he was in need of recuperation after the completion of some major task; in the summer of 1860, he had just finished correcting the sheets of the fifth and final volume of Modern Painters, which had left him exhausted. For this reason, he visited Chamonix, arriving there in late June 1860 and staying until early August. During this stay, although he was much occupied with essays on the national wealth and social justice, published in book form as Unto This Last in 1862, he did spend time climbing and sketching with the American journalist W. J. Stillman, who was his guest for this period.