This view of the source of the River Arveyron in the Chamonix valley, in present-day France, is one of two known (the other being FT339). The summit here is not Mont Blanc itself, which is some five miles south of this scene, but the Aiguille du Bochard, a relatively minor peak in the Mont Blanc range, situated on the north border of the Mer de Glace glacier. The glacier’s southern end, depicted here descending steeply from the right onto the floor of the valley, was known as the Glacier du Bois until it disappeared altogether around the turn of the twentieth century. The phenomenon of the source of the Arveyron, in which each summer the river appeared from under the open mouth of the glacial ice on the valley floor, lasted until the 1870s.

Towne’s viewpoint cannot be determined exactly, as the scene has changed so much: not only has the ice disappeared but the valley is now densely wooded. Nonetheless, it is likely that Towne drew from the valley floor, a fairly common viewpoint for visiting sketchers—see, for example, the versions by J. M. W. Turner in 1802 (Tate), John “Warwick” Smith in 1781,¹ and William Thornton in 1783 or 1784 (Library of Congress). Towne included two pointed features in the far right of his view, which are surely representations of the Aiguilles du Dru (see also FT337, FT834). If so, however, Towne has placed them forward of the Aiguille du Bochard, thus rendering them much smaller than their actual size—in fact they dominate Bochard—and given them the appearance of ice. The other principal divergences from the viewed scene are Bochard itself, made more grand and isolated and all but hiding the summit to its left; the strip of wooded land, which in Towne’s work runs upwards between Bochard and the glacier but which in fact formed the near side of the glacier; and the river, which Towne depicts on his left but which was almost certainly to his right. Although the sun does rise behind the Aiguilles du Dru, they are so high that sunrays do not cast shadows onto the Bochard or, indeed, onto the angled area of rock that Towne shows on the lower right sheet of paper. However, throwing sunlight onto the rock helps to elucidate its shape for the viewer.

Towne travelled through Switzerland with John “Warwick” Smith, whose version of the scene is known in a copy dated 1798 by his pupil Harriet Green.² It is unclear whether Green was working from Smith’s on-the-spot sketch or a later work. There are, of course, very great differences between this work and Towne’s. The artist’s efforts to prettify the scene, especially through the more fully developed foreground, and the focus of interest in the river source itself, convey a topographical purpose and curiosity at odds with Towne’s view, where the Arveyron’s source is but a minor product of the vast forces of nature. Nevertheless, Smith’s work is notable for its affinity with Towne’s method of building the picture through a series of angular planes, reaching finally to the aiguille. 

Like Tate’s version of the source (FT339), Towne’s drawing shows evidence of having been worked on much later than 1781. Red ink, which once outlined large areas of the ice, has been unpicked; and the blue sky and shadows in the lower right part of the work have been reinforced with several layers of wash. The tiny brush hatchings on the glacier, and the high degree of detail in building up the foreground more generally, are also untypical of work coloured during the 1780s but are seen in much later work such as a view of the Exe dated 1799 (FT603). 

The V&A’s files state that this drawing was restored in June 1938.