Glaciers Exhibition Opens at the Alpine Club

With increasing attention being given to the issue of climate change and the effect it is having on mountain environments, glaciers have been pushed into the fore of public consciousness. In our new exhibition, 'Glaciers', curated by Janet Johnson, we use the Alpine Club's extensive collection of mountain art work to explore the ways that glaciers were depicted prior to the advent of photography.

Today, glaciers are revered for their sublime beauty and hold a melancholy quality, serving as significant testimony to the impact of climate change. But in previous centuries, glaciers themselves, rather than their retreat, were something to be feared; moving their way through alpine valleys and sometimes crushing entire villages in their wake. They were powerful, elemental forces of nature. The watercolour and oil paintings in The Alpine Club Collection are a valuable historical record of the world's glaciers and humanity's relationship to them.

This new exhibition will showcase some of the finest works in our collection, including a number of rarely-exhibited hidden gems that have not been shown for a long time due to a need for special safe lighting or because they are in a delicate condition and require some repair.

 

Thanks to our digital partners, these works will also be available to view online. Ninety-four oil and watercolour paintings can be found on the Art UK website while The Watercolour World showcases a further 617 watercolours, including rarely if ever seen paintings from alpine artists’ travel sketchbooks as well as mounted watercolours stored in archival boxes. We are hoping to further increase the number of entries on both sites over time. For this exhibition, we have curated a special collection of featured works on the ArtUK website.

If you would like to view these remarkable pieces in person, the exhibition will run from 11 January - 27 April 2022 and is open every Tuesday and Wednesday from 12PM to 5PM

We ask that you please book in advance by calling 0207 613 0755 or by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

Our Digital Partners

To help bring our extensive art collection to a wider audience, The Alpine Club is working with two innovative partners, Art UK and The Watercolour World. Together, these two online portals provide an opportunity to place more of our paintings on constant digital display, allowing audiences to view, curate and purchase prints of their favourite pieces. 

Art UK

Art UK is an online art database that shows over 200,000 artworks from 3,000 venues across the UK.

Art UK was originally conceived as a database of oil paintings belonging to public collections. However, it now also shows a growing number of private collections (for example, the Oxford and Cambridge colleges). In addition to oil paintings, collections can upload images of watercolours and drawings. The site is free to access and non-profit making.

The Alpine Club is able to sell prints through the Art UK shop and license images for use in publications and for items such as wall calendars. All the images available on this website are out of copyright, (seventy years after the artist’s death).

www.artuk.org

 

The Watercolour World

The Watercolour World is also an online portal that showcases purely documentary watercolour painting through the ages.

‘Before the invention of the camera, people used watercolours to document the world. Over the centuries, painters – both professional and amateur – created hundreds of thousands of images recording life as they witnessed it. Every one of these paintings has a story to tell, but many are hidden away in archives, albums and store rooms, too fragile to display. The Watercolour World exists to bring them back into view. We are creating a free online database of documentary watercolours painted before 1900.’

At present it is not possible to buy prints from the website.

www.watercolourworld.org

 

 

 

Glaciers Exhibition - Featured Works on Watercolour World

Our current exhibition, 'Glaciers', is a wonderful opportunity to see paintings of mountain glaciers from the last 200 years. Featuring works from the likes of Ruskin and Loppé, the exhibition brings together some startlingly evocative pieces from our collection.

Find out how to visit here.

While there is a huge benefit to seeing these remarkable works in person, for those who are unable to attend, we are pleased to be able to provide online curations that together feature nearly all of the paintings in the exhibition.

The first is available on ArtUK, with the remaining pieces laid out below with links to view them on The Watercolour World which holds a large collection of digitised watercolour paintings, including many from the Alpine Club collections. To see a larger version of any of these images, simply right-click the painting in question. 

  
^{'Bachalpsee Glacier', Arthur Croft, (1874)}

^{'Breithorn Glacier', Unknown Artist}

 
^{'Part of the Oberland from the Simplon', Henry George Willink, (1880)}

^{'Fee Glacier and Allalinhorn', Hilda Marion Hechle}

^{'Mer de Glace - from the Montanvert', Unknown Artist, (1855)}

^{'Mer de Glace', Unknown Artist}

^{'Aiguille Verte and Dru', George Barnard, (1877)}

^{'Auldjo's Party Passing a Crevasse', John Auldjo, (1828)}

^{'The Ascent of Mont Blanc by John Auldjo's Party in 1827: Sheltering During a Storm', John Auldjo, (1828)}

 

 

Women With Altitude

From November 2021 to January 2022, the Alpine Club hosted a joint exhibition in partnership with the Pinnacle Club to celebrate the last century of female mountaineering. Held in the centenary year of the Pinnacle Club, the exhibition profiled 12 pioneering female climbers who had been members of one or both clubs in the previous 100 years. With the exhibition's run now at an end, we are making the exhibition materials available online. These include the complete displays for each of the 12 profiled women, a video walk through of the exhibition hosted by Alpine Club librarian Beth Hodgett and a collection of educational resources for young people that were produced to accompany the exhibition.

The sampling of the banners included below feature QR codes which, when scanned, will direct you to a sound recording of the profiled individual or a contemporary reading of something they wrote during their lifetime. To scan the QR code, simply click on the banner, select to expand it by using the icon in the top left corner of the image, focus on the QR code using your phone's camera and follow the link that is generated. The audio recording will play automatically.

 

Display Banners

The additional banners and photographs of the exhibition displays can be viewed in the exhibition booklet below:

 

Video Walk Through

 

Exhibition Videos

100 Years of the Pinnacle Club:

 

Educational Resources

A variety of resources were produced to accompany the exhibition and are tailored to young people from KS2 to KS4 (7-16). Click the link below to access a pdf booklet of the resources.

 

 

 

2021 marks 100 years since the foundation of The Pinnacle Club, one of the UK’s only all-women climbing clubs. As part of their centenary celebrations, the Pinnacle Club have partnered with the Alpine Club to host ‘Women with Altitude’, an interactive exhibition that profiles ground-breaking female alpinists from the last 100 years of both clubs.

As in so many areas of history, the lives and accomplishments of female climbers have often been overlooked, forgotten or diminished. This exhibition seeks to rebalance that narrative by making the biographical details of these women’s lives accessible and by foregrounding their stories with the use of their own words and possessions.

Alongside biographical displays for the 12 featured climbers, visitors will also be able to listen to audio recordings via QR codes, (a smartphone will be necessary for this element of the exhibition), and view a number of films featuring the profiled climbers. It is our hope that a combination of traditional exhibition materials, such as artefacts and displays, alongside these interactive elements will bring these women to life for a modern audience and allow us all to more fully engage with their stories.

 

The exhibition will link these historic stories to the present using a timeline of women's achievements that runs up to the present day and shorter profiles of contemporary female mountaineers.

The exhibition is located at the Alpine Club’s premises of 55 Charlotte Road, London, EC2A 3QF and will run from 8 November to 8 January with closures on the 9 November, 14 December and for the Christmas period of 20 December to 5 January.

It is open 10AM – 5PM Monday to Friday, with extended opening to 9PM on Thursdays.

Entry is free and on a drop-in basis, but we do ask that larger groups of 8 or more visitors make a booking in advance by contacting This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to ensure we can accommodate you. 

As part of the exhibition, the Pinnacle Club and Alpine Club have commissioned the production of teaching materials to be used by visiting school groups. The materials are linked to the national curriculum and are designed to accommodate children from KS2 to KS4 (11-16 years of age). If you are aware of any schools or youth organisations who may be interested in arranging a visit to the exhibition, please get in touch with us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further details.