This ink wash and watercolour by Joseph Pennell (1857–1926) shows the Findeln Glacier from the Riffel Path, Zermatt, Switzerland.

Pennell was born in Philadelphia and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In addition to his pen and ink drawings and etchings, Pennell worked in watercolours, oils and pastels and made lithographs. He won numerous medals at international exhibitions, including the Paris Exposition of 1900 and the St. Louis Exposition of 1904. He illustrated and wrote books, as well as manuals on book illustration and printmaking technique.

Pennell's Alpine works, produced with the confident, economical line of an illustrator-etcher, offer a distinctive counterpart to the more heavily worked oil views of his Alpine painter contemporaries. Collectors of American illustration, Zermatt/Findeln Glacier views, and turn-of-the-century watercolour technique will find this an accomplished example of Pennell's graphic approach to mountain subject matter.