Callow was among the longest-lived and most industrious of English watercolorists. From his election to the Society of Painters in Water-colours in 1834, he exhibited 1152 watercolors in 74 annual exhibitions, including this work in 1848.

Callow first saw the Rhone Glacier in 1838 sweeping eight miles down from the saw-toothed heights of the Galenstock like immense waterfalls of blue ice. Ever the great pedestrian, Callow had walked from Paris, followed the Rhine south into Switzerland and, from the foot of the Rhone Glacier, ascended 2,000 feet up the Furka Pass road to reach the Italian frontier at the St. Gotthard Pass ten weeks later.