Elijah Walton, Thomas George Bonney

Elijah Walton’s color plate views of the Western Alps, including the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Monte Viso, Aosta Valley, Dent Du Midi and The Grivola.

• Thomas George Bonney (English).
• Illustrated by Elijah Walton.
• London: Sampson Low, Son and Marston, 1868.
• Folio.
• Includes 21 chromolithographs by J.H. Lowes after Elijah Walton, each mounted as issued with printed caption in margin, tissue guards, and each plate with descriptive text.
• Reissue of the original subscribers’ edition, first published in 1867.
• Bound in the publisher’s original brown half morocco, gilt lettering to cover.

In 1862, William Matthews, the founder of the Alpine Club, first commissioned the landscape artist Elijah Walton to travel to the Alps, and for the next five years he journeyed to various parts of the region to paint. The text for Peaks and Valleys is by the geologist T.G. Bonney who, having himself made nine visits to the Alps, testifies to the Ruskinian authenticity of Walton's views, praising them favorably to "photographs of mountains [which] are rarely satisfactory, and generally make them appear lower and far less impressive than they really are..."