Focus on Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps and explore the Composition.
The irregular composition, without geometric axes or perspective, breaks traditional rules of composition. It is similar to Turner's 1800-2 watercolour, Edward I's Army in Wales, painted to illustrate a passage from the poem The Bard by Thomas Gray, in which an army marches diagonally across the painting through a mountain pass, and is assailed by an archer to the left of the painting. Turner sketched out the foreground figures as early as 1804, and had observed an impressive storm from Farnley Hall, the house of Walter Fawkes in Yorkshire, in 1810; making notes on the back of a letter, he remarked to Fawkes' son Hawkesworth that its like would be seen again in two years, and it would be called "Hannibal crossing the Alps". Turner may also have been inspired by a lost oil painting of Hannibal's army descending the Alps into northern Italy by watercolourist John Robert Cozens, A Landscape with Hannibal in His March over the Alps, Showing to His Army the Fertile Plains of Italy, the only oil painting that Cozens exhibited at the Royal Academy, and also an entry in list of imaginary paintings written by Thomas Gray, which speculated that Salvator Rosa could have painted "Hannibal passing the Alps". Another spur to make the painting could have been the visit of a delegation from the Tyrol to London in 1809, seeking support to oppose Napoleon.
Napoleon Thomas Gray Farnley Hall The Bard Salvator Rosa Edward I's Army in Wales Hannibal Walter Fawkes John Robert Cozens Tyrol London