Representations of the Alps before the eighteenth century reflected the awe and terror that local people and travellers had for this frequently impenetrable and rugged mountain chain. During the Little Ice Age (c. 1650–1850) glaciers and frozen surfaces were much more extensive than in the Middle Ages, when some of the highest passes were open all year round. For some seventeenth-century British poets and artists mountains were the expression of God’s wrath. Enlightenment explorations began in the eighteenth century, during what has been termed the ‘Discovery of the Alps’. Pioneers included the geologist and meteorologist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740–1799), who promoted the first documented ascent of Mont Blanc by Jacques Balmat (1762–1834) and Michel Gabriel Paccard (1757–1827) in August 1786.

Several of the enthusiasts who explored the Alps in this period produced detailed topographical views of their discoveries that were strongly linked with geology and glaciology. The earliest known view of the Mer de Glace above Chamonix, drawn by the amateur artist Robert Price in 1741, was engraved by Francis Vivares and published in 1744. Forty years later, in 1781, the German artist Jacob Philip Hackert (1737–1807), a friend of Goethe and of the English amateur artist Charles Gore (1729–1807), produced views of glaciers including the Mer de Glace. Such visits were now almost commonplace; Hackert’s picture shows wealthy tourists taking in the view, drawing and sheltering from the sun with umbrellas. In September of the same year de Saussure guided artists to the best viewpoints, reaching Chamonix from Geneva with the English artist Francis Towne (1740–1816), whose The Source of the Arveyron is today at the Tate Gallery. By the late eighteenth century the popularisation of the Voyages pittoresques and the increasing number of artists to the Swiss side of the western Alps, north of the Valle d’Aosta, resulted in several printed topographical depictions.

The history of nineteenth-century Alpine exploration and climbing is well known. In this chapter we focus on the way in which British and Italian travellers, tourists and settlers began to explore, understand and colonise mountains not only for their sublime scenery but also through interests in agriculture, botany and tourism.