EL MULHACEN (3) BY JOAQUIN SOROLLA

 JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BATISDA (1863-1923),

  El Mulhacén  (3, 478 m - 11,411ft)

Spain

 In  La sierra Nevada Spain from the Alhambra, Granada 

The mountain 

Mulhacén (3, 478 m - 11,411ft) is the highest mountain in continental Spain and in the Iberian Peninsula. It is part of the Sierra Nevada range in the Cordillera Penibética. It is named after Abu l-Hasan Ali, or Muley Hacén as he is known in Spanish, the penultimate Muslim King of Granada in the 15th century who, according to legend, was buried on the summit of the mountain.

Mulhacén is the highest peak in Europe outside the Caucasus Mountains and the Alps. It is also the third most topographically prominent peak in Western Europe, after Mont Blanc and Mount Etna, and is ranked 64th in the world by prominence.  The peak is not exceptionally dramatic in terms of steepness or local relief. The south flank of the mountain is gentle and presents no technical challenge, as is the case for the long west ridge. The shorter, somewhat steeper north east ridge is slightly more technical. The north face of the mountain, however, is much steeper, and offers several routes involving moderately steep climbing on snow and ice (up to French grade AD) in the winter

Mulhacén can be climbed in a single day from the villages of either Capileira or Trevélez, but it is more common to spend a night at the mountain refuge at Poqueira, or in the bare shelter at Caldera to the west. Those making the ascent from Trevelez can also bivouac at the tarns to the northeast of the peak.

The painter 

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida  was a Spanish painter.  Sorolla excelled in the painting of portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of social and historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native land.

Sorolla's influence on some other Spanish painters, such as Alberto Pla y Rubio and Julio Romero de Torres, was so noted that they are described as "sorollista."

After his death, Sorolla's widow, Clotilde Garcia del Castillo, left many of his paintings to the Spanish public. The paintings eventually formed the collection that is now known as the Museo Sorolla, which was the artist's house in Madrid. The museum opened in 1932.

Early in 1911, Sorolla visited the United States for a second time, and exhibited 152 new paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum and 161 at the Art Institute of Chicago a few weeks later. Later that year Sorolla met Archie Huntington in Paris and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. These 14 magnificent murals, installed to this day in the Hispanic Society of America building in Manhattan, range from 12 to 14 feet in height, and total 227 feet in length.The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life.

Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific 'Vision of Spain', eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain. Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to the specific locales to paint them: Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile, Leon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costume. Each mural celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by July 1919.

Sorolla suffered a stroke in 1920, while painting a portrait in his garden in Madrid. Paralyzed for over three years, he died on 10 August 1923. He is buried in the Cementeri de Valencia, Spain.

The Sorolla Room, housing the Provinces of Spain at the Hispanic Society of America, opened to the public in 1926. The room closed for remodeling in 2008, and the murals toured museums in Spain for the first time. The Sorolla Room reopened in 2010, with the murals on permanent display.

Sorolla's work is represented in museums throughout Spain, Europe, America, and in many private collections in Europe and America. In 1933, J. Paul Getty purchased ten Impressionist beach scenes made by Sorolla, several of which are now housed in the J. Paul Getty Museum.

In 2007 many of his works were exhibited at the Petit Palais in Paris, alongside those of John Singer Sargent, a contemporary who painted in a similarly impressionist-influenced manner. In 2009, there was a special exhibition of his works at the Prado in Madrid, and in 2010, the exhibition visited the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba, Brazil.

From 5 December 2011 to 10 March 2012, several of Sorolla's works were exhibited in Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, in New York. This exhibition included pieces used during Sorolla's eight-year research for The Vision of Spain.

JEBEL BOU NACEUR BY EUGENE DELACROIX

EUGENE  DELACROIX  (1798-1863)

Jebel Bou Naceur (3,356 m - 11,010 ft)

Morocco

 In  Album d'Afrique du Nord et d'Espagne - Environs de Meknès, 1832, watercolour on paper 

The mountain 

Jebel Bou Naceur (3,356 m)  or Adrar Bou Nacer, in Morocco is the highest peak of the Middle Eastern  Atlas, located in its very heart. It is covered with neonates during three quarters of the year, but  despite of that is subject to a typical Mediterranean climate.

The cities of Meknes and Fes are the closest from this summit.

The painter 
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.
However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible."
In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa, as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquered Algeria. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture.  He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism.  Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus…"
He managed to sketch some women secretly in Algiers, as in the painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as subjects for the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1837–41).
While in Tangier, Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city (see painting above), subjects to which he would return until the end of his life. Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable (1860), The Lion Hunt (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and Arab Saddling his Horse (1855).

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THE SCHILTHORN BY JOSEPH ANTON KOCH

JOSEPH ANTON KOCH  (1768-1839)

The Schilthorn  (2,970 m- 9,744 ft) 

Switzerland

In  Das Lauterbrunnen, 1821, oil on canvas, 

The mountain
The Schilthorn  (2,970 m- 9,744 ft) is a peak in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland, near the alpine village of Mürren. Access to the village of Mürren and the summit of Schilthorn is impossible by road. To get there from the valley, take a series of cable cars, the first part of Stechelberg to join Gimmelwald, then Mürren. From Mürren a second cable car leads to Birg, from where a third joins the Schilthorn1. Another way to reach Mürren is to take the cable car from Lauterbrunnen to Grütschalp, then the train to Mürren.

The painter 
Joseph Anton Koch was an Austrian (Tyrol) painter of Neoclassicism and later the German Romantic movement; he is perhaps the most significant neoclassical landscape painter.
He   received academic training in the Karlsschule Stuttgart, a strict military academy. In 1791, he ran away, and traveled through France and Switzerland. He arrived in Rome in 1795. Koch was close to the painter Asmus Jacob Carstens and carried on Carstens' "heroic" art, at first in a literal manner.
After 1800, Koch developed as a landscape painter.  In Rome, he espoused a new type of "heroic" landscape, revising the classical compositions of Poussin and Lorrain with a more rugged, mountainous scenery. In 1812, forced through inadequate income from his work, or in protest of the French invasion, he went to Vienna, where he worked prolifically. He stayed in Vienna until 1815. During this period, he incorporated more non-classical themes in his work.  In Vienna, he was influenced by Friedrich Schlegel and enthusiasts of old German art.  In response, his style became harsher. When returning to Rome, Koch became a conspicuous figure in the German artists' colony there.  He painted, among other works, the four frescoes in the Dante Room of the Villa Massimi (1824–29).  He wrote Moderne Kunstchronik oder die rumfordische Suppe gekocht und geschrieben von J. A. Koch (Stuttgart, 1834) which was directed humorously against unjustifiable criticism and false connoisseurship.  Koch's last years were spent in great poverty. He died in Rome,where he was buried in the Teutonic Cemetery, located next to St. Peter's Basilica within Vatican City.  He etched 20 Italian landscapes and a large sheet representing The Oath of the French at Millesimo; 14 pages after Dante, adding later another 30 pages (published Vicenza, 1904), and 36 pages after Ossian.
He contributed American landscape scenes to the works of Alexander von Humboldt (1805).

MOUNT KENT BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

 EUGENE VON GUERARD (1811-1901)

Mount  Kent (1, 540m - 5052 ft)

Australia

The mountain 

Mount Kent is a mountain s situated 48kms away  the  village of Briagolong southeast of Victoria, southeast of Australia.

The painter 
Johann Joseph Eugene von Guerard was an Austrian-born artist, active in Australia from 1852 to 1882. Known for his finely detailed landscapes in the tradition of the Düsseldorf school of painting, he is represented in Australia's major public galleries, and is referred to in the country as Eugene von Guerard. In 1852 von Guerard arrived in Victoria, Australia, determined to try his luck on the Victorian goldfields. As a gold-digger he was not very successful, but he did produce a large number of intimate studies of goldfields life, quite different from the deliberately awe-inspiring landscapes for which he was later to become famous. Realizing that there were opportunities for an artist in Australia, he abandoned the diggings and was soon undertaking commissions recording the dwellings and properties of wealthy pastoralists.
By the early 1860s, von Guerard was recognized as the foremost landscape artist in the colonies, touring Southeast Australia and New Zealand in pursuit of the sublime and the picturesque.  He is most known for the wilderness paintings produced during this time, which are remarkable for their shadowy lighting and fastidious detail.  Indeed, his View of Tower Hill in south-western Victoria was used as a botanical template over a century later when the land, which had been laid waste and polluted by agriculture, was systematically reclaimed, forested with native flora and made a state park. The scientific accuracy of such work has led to a reassessment of von Guerard's approach to wilderness painting, and some historians believe it likely that the landscapist was strongly influenced by the environmental theories of the leading scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Others attribute his 'truthful representation' of nature to the criterion for figure and landscape painting set by the Düsseldorf Academy.
In 1866 his Valley of the Mitta Mitta was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; in 1870 the trustees purchased his Mount Kosciusko shown in this article was titled "Northeast view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko", which is actually  "from Mount Townsend".
In 2006, the City of Greater Geelong purchased his 1856 painting View of Geelong for A$3.8M. His painting, Yalla-y-Poora, is in the Joseph Brown Collection on display at the National Gallery of Victoria.  The State Library of New South Wales in Sydney holds an extensive collection of working sketchbooks by Eugene von Guerard, as well as larger drawings and paintings and a diary. The sketchbooks cover regions as diverse as Italy and Germany, Tasmania, New South Wales, and of course, Victoria.
In 1870 von Guerard was appointed the first Master of the School of Painting at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he was to influence the training of artists for the next 11 years. His reputation, high at the beginning of this period, had faded somewhat towards the end because of his rigid adherence to picturesque subject matter and detailed treatment in the face of the rise of the more intimate Heidelberg School style. Amongst his pupils were Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts. Von Guerard retired from his position at the National Gallery School the end of 1881 and departed for Europe in January 1882. In 1891 his wife died. Two years later, he lost his investments in the Australian bank crash and he lived in poverty until his death in Chelsea, London, on 17 April 1901.

Several paintings of mountains of Australia and New Zealand by Eugène von Guerard are published in this blog, check the link in the name list of painters....

JAKHOO HILLS & HIMALAYAS BY ANNE ELIZA SCOTT

 ANNE ELIZA SCOTT (1810-1892)
   Jakhoo hill (2,454 m - 8,051 ft)
India  

From "Views of Himalayas" Plate 14 -  The village of koomar seen on the left hand range the Kooloo and Kote Kangooro in the distance, 1852, Aquatint, 

About the views and the artist
The views are mostly of the Simla region of the Himalayas, where Anne Eliza Scott (1810-1892) spent time in 1850 and 1851. Anne Eliza was the eldest daughter of Colonel Tobias Kirkwood and married Lieutenant William L.L. Scott of the Bengal Army in 1838. They travelled to India in 1839 and some years later Mrs Scott was informed that the Governor- General Lord Dalhousie and others would like some familiar scenes of the Himalayas to be published. She then  published her unique work Views Of Himalayas, a series of plates  seen from different point of views.

The mountain 
 Jakhoo Hill (2,454 m - 8,051 ft) 2.5 km /1.3 miles east from the Ridge,  is  Shimla's highest peak offering a panoramic view of the Shivalik Ranges and the town of Sanjauli. An ancient "Lord Hanuman" temple is there and every year a big festival is held on Dussehra.

CLARK PEAK BY GLACIERS CHARLES PARTRIDGE ADAMS

CHARLES PARTRIDGE ADAMS (1858 -1942) 

Clark Peak  (3,950m - 12,960 ft) 

United States of America (Colorado) 

In Rawah Peaks, Sequoia Park, oil on canvas,

The mountain 
 Clark Peak is the highest summit of the Medicine Bow Mountains range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The prominent  peak is located in the Rawah Wilderness of Routt National Forest, 6.3 miles (10.1 km) north-northwest (bearing 342°) of Cameron Pass, Colorado, United States, on the drainage divide between Jackson and Larimer counties. Clark Peak is the highest point of Jackson County and the entire drainage basin of the North Platte River.

The painter 
Charles Partridge Adams was a largely self-taught American landscape artist who painted primarily in Colorado, and secondarily in California. Some paintings were also made in other Rocky Mountain states, the Pacific Northwest and Canada, and a few in Louisiana, the East Coast and Europe.
Adams is widely considered to have been Colorado’s finest landscape artist. He is best known for his stunning views of snowy mountain peaks in early morning or sunset light, or wreathed in storm clouds, and for his luminous sunset and twilight paintings of the river bottoms near Denver. His works show an intensely personal and poetic response to the Colorado mountains and plains, with unusual sensitivity to the changing effects of light, atmosphere and season.
Adams early work in the 1880s was largely representational and somewhat prosaic, with only hints of the more impressionist works to follow. His style began to coalesce in the early 1890s with some excellent luminous sunsets, some of which were in a Barbizon style, but overall his output was still uneven. In the later 1890s his painting became much more consistent, impressionist, and colorful, and this style prevailed through about 1915. After that his style became progressively “looser,” with larger brush strokes, brighter colors, more impasto, and much less attention to foreground and detail. Some paintings left at his death show only traces of his previous skill.
Adams experimented freely with different palettes and lighting, and some of these were much more successful than others. He must have created several hundred paintings of Longs and Meeker Peaks from his studio in Estes Park, Colorado, yet no two are alike, and some are strikingly different.
Some of his earlier paintings include animals or human figures, but he was not very successful at rendering these, and later paintings do not include them.
Roughly half of Adams paintings are oils and half are watercolors, which he began painting in the early 1890s. Although some of his watercolors are masterfully detailed and very carefully done, others are much less detailed, and must have been done very quickly for the tourist trade. As one watercolorist remarked about one of these, “That one must have taken him all of 15 minutes.” Over 950 paintings have been documented. His total output is unknown, but it is estimated to have been 3,000 or more.

EL ANTISANA PAINTED BY RAFAEL TROYA

RAFAEL TROYA (1845-1920)

El Antisana (5,753 m -18,874 ft)

Ecuador (Napo)

In El Antisana o La cacería del venado, oil on canvas, 1918,

Archivo Histórico del Banco Central del Ecuador, Quito. 

Colección Banco Central del Ecuador, Guayaquil

The volcano 

El Antisana (5,753 m -18,874 ft) is a stratovolcano of the Andes Cordillera, located in Ecuador, in the province of Napo. Its last eruption dates back to 1801 (strombolian-type eruption, with lava flows, dome formation at the top that encloses the main crater, ash rain).

EL Antisana separates the Andean Corridor where Quito (located 50 km to the northwest), the province of Pichincha, the Amazon region and the province of Napo. It is the fourth highest peak of Ecuador. The volcano formed in the southeastern part of the great Chacana caldera and has a cone-like shape typical of stratovolcanoes. The summit is formed in a double cone, the most recent cone-shaped, with a breach, and partly overlooking the old cone, which is composed of two caldeiras (east and south).

The eternal snows cover the two cones. The volcano is very often hidden in the clouds.

It is considered an active volcano because of a perceptible activity via fumaroles releases in craters, hot springs (used for thermal tourism), and the last eruptions that occurred during the 18th century. The eruption of 1728, for example, was similar to the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. However,  the presence of a large glacier, and eternal snows, present a risk for the populations of the province of Pichincha and the capital Quito, and its metropolitan area to the east.

El Antisana is known to offer a higher technical challenge than the rest of Ecuadorian volcanoes. Because of its extremely moving glacier, there is no conventional way due to the fact  many crevasses appear and disappear each year. Antisana is also known to offer one of the most dramatic climate change topics in Latin America as it is estimated that one-third of its glacier has disappeared in 30 years.

The painter 

Rafael Troya (1845-1920) was an Ecuadorian painter born, the son of the painter Vicente Troya. Being a teenager, he is taken to the Colegio de la Compañia de Jesus in Quito, but he soon abandons the clerical career to dedicate himself to what was his true vocation: painting. With the painter Luis Cadena, he learns the technique of colors. In 1872, he definitely choose the landscape and accompanied  Reis and Stübel on their study trips in Ecuador on Nature and Archeology. Troya becomes the portraitist of nature, painting compositions full of color and life. In 1890 he came back in the capital of Imbabureña, and decided to be completely dedicated to his art. There he made several masterpieces, such as the paintings on the Apostles, which today are admired in the Ibarra Cathedral, the Ibarra Foundation, preserved in the Hall of the city of Ibarra; Allegory of love, panoramic view of Ibarra; The earthquake of Imbabura, and several religious canvases that are conserved in some churches of Quito, in the church of Caranqui and in the Museum of the Central Bank of Quito. In his paintings, green and bluish tones predominate, characteristic of his native land. He painted a lot of mountains of the Andes and  the most famous volcanoes of the Cordillera.

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THE MONT VENTOUX BY PIERRE GRIVOLAS

PIERRE GRIVOLAS (1823 - 1906)

 The mont Ventoux (1, 911m - 6, 270ft)
France (Provence-Alpe-Côte-d'Azur)  

    In  Le mont Ventoux entre 1888 et 1906 - Bibliothèque-Musée Inguimbertine, Carpentras, France  

The mountain 

Mont Ventoux  (1, 911m - 6, 270ft), Ventor in Latin, is located in the French department of Vaucluse (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur). It is about 25 kilometers long on an east-west for 15 kilometers wide on a north-south axis. Nicknamed the Giant of Provence, it is the culmination of the Monts du Vaucluse, the ultimate link of the Southern Alps and the highest peak of Vaucluse. Its geographical isolation makes it visible over great distances.

- More about Mont Ventoux 

The painter
Pierre Grivolas is a French painter born and dead in the same city of Avignon. Student of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, he met Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix and Hippolyte Flandrin. In 1848, the Parisian riots forced him to return to Avignon where he joined  the Félibrige (An association created in 1854 by seven young Provencal friends to restore Provencal language, literature and culture).
Around 1866, Count Nicholas of Séménov and his young wife Marie de Séménov, born in Kologrivoff, both of Russian origin, bought and built an house in Provence, at Les Angles, in a place called Chêne Vert, whose plans were drawn by Pierre Grivolas with contest of his younger brother Antoine. This residence will quickly become the meeting place of the Félibrige movement. The Russian couple and Pierre Grivolas will become very close friends.
He became director of the School of Fine Arts in Avignon from 1878 to 1906 and formed many painted which formed with him the New School of Avignon, third of the name. For this, he renewed the way of painting his students by leaving them academic and leading them on the ground to go to the Angles, along the banks of the Rhone, allowing them to take a new look at the nature through the shadow and the light.
In 1894, he invited his brother Antoine Grivolas to leave the Côte d'Azur to join him and settle in the heart of Mont Ventoux in the "Bergerie du Rat" and then at "Combe de Clare". The two painters lived the same life as the shepherds, sleeping on the straw and feeding on slices of bacon and milk. Having made a set of sketches, sketches and canvases, they moved the following year to settle in Monieux, at the entrance of the Nesque gorges.
From this fraternal collaboration are born works that make them consider as major painters of the mythical Giant of Provence, the Mont Ventoux.

MOUNT BYRD BY DAVID ROSENTHAL

DAVID ROSENTHAL (bn. 1953)

Mount Byrd  (810 m -  2,660 ft)

Antarctica (Ford Ranges)

The mountain 

Mount Byrd  (810 m -  2,660 ft) is a mountain, located 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the eastern end of Asman Ridge in the Sarnoff Mountains, Ford Ranges, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. It was mapped by the United States Antarctic Service (1939–41) led by R. Admiral Richard E. Byrd, and named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) for Richard E. Byrd, Jr., son of Admiral Byrd and a member of Operation Highjump (1946–47), who was of assistance to US-ACAN in clarifying a large number of name suggestions put forth by his father.

The Painter 
David Rosenthal is known as an Antarctic Painter, Painter of Ice, Arctic Artist, Alaskan Artist and an Extreme Artist. He has been lured to cold climates regularly to record snow, ice, and landscapes. Davids paintings of glaciers and icebergs are astoundingly realistic and at the same ethereal at the same time. However his work also includes much more than ice, icebergs and glaciers... Cordova, Alaska is the place David Rosenthal calls home. As an artist and art teacher David has taught and continues to teach many students in Alaska. While teaching art in Alaska, David has instructed students and artist in many programs including the Alaska Artists in the Schools Program, Prince William Sound Community College and University of Alaska Fairbanks Summer Sessions. Alaskan artist David Rosenthal makes it a priority to travel around Alaska as much as possible to continue to capture the incredible beauty in his artwork of Alaska.
Having spent over sixty months on the Ice, including four austral winters and six austral summers, David became an Antarctic artist and has created art images from a large variety of places in every season. David has completed paintings of the antarctic landscape from all across Antarctica. Time in Antarctica included travel as a participant in the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program during a summer and a winter at McMurdo Station as well as most of a winter at Palmer Station. David has also worked for the NSF contractor for two winters and four summers in various job capacities as a way to spend time and become familiar with the landscape.

Rosenthal's work also includes many water colors, oil paintings, sketches and small studies. The paintings seem to magically reflect the intensity of nature's colors and the atmospheric phenomena that David Rosenthal  witnesses. David Rosenthal really is a master of Extreme Art!

 

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

AORAKI / MOUNT COOK (2) BY CHARLES BLOMFIELD

CHARLES BLOMFIELD (1848-1926) 

Aoraki / Mount Cook (3,724m - 12, 218ft) 

New Zealand

 In Mount Cook  from the Lake Pukaki, oil on canvas 

The mountain 

Aoraki / Mount Cook (3,724m - 12, 218ft)  is the highest mountain in New Zealand. Its height since 2014 is listed as 3,724 m since December 1991, due to a rockslide and subsequent erosion. It lies in the Southern Alps, the mountain range which runs the length of the South Island. A popular tourist destination, it is also a favourite challenge for mountain climbers. Aoraki / Mount Cook consists of three summits, from South to North the Low Peak (3,593 m or 11,788 ft), Middle Peak (3,717 m or 12,195 ft) and High Peak. The summits lie slightly south and east of the main divide of the Southern Alps, with the Tasman Glacier to the east and the Hooker Glacier to the southwest.The mountain is in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, in the Canterbury region. The park was established in 1953 and along with Westland National Park, Mount Aspiring National Park and Fiordland National Park forms one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The park contains more than 140 peaks standing over 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) and 72 named glaciers, which cover 40 percent of its 700 square kilometres (170,000 acres).

Aoraki is the name of a person in the traditions of the Ngāi Tahu iwi; an early name for the South Island is Te Waka o Aoraki (Aoraki's Canoe). In the past many believed it meant "Cloud Piercer",  Historically, the Māori name has been spelt Aorangi, using the standard Māori form.

Aoraki / Mount Cook has been known to Maori since their arrival in New Zealand some time around the 14th century CE. The first Europeans who may have seen Aoraki / Mount Cook were members of Abel Tasman's crew, who saw a "large land uplifted high" while off the west coast of the South Island, just north of present-day Greymouth on 13 December 1642 during Tasman's first Pacific voyage. The English name of Mount Cook was given to the mountain in 1851 by Captain John Lort Stokes to honour Captain James Cook who surveyed and circumnavigated the islands of New Zealand in 1770. Captain Cook did not sight the mountain during his exploration.
Following the settlement between Ngāi Tahu and the Crown in 1998, the name of the mountain was officially changed from Mount Cook to Aoraki / Mount Cook to incorporate its historic Māori name, Aoraki. As part of the settlement, a number of South Island placenames were amended to incorporate their original Māori name. Signifying the importance of Aoraki / Mount Cook, it is the only one of these names where the Māori name precedes the English.

The painter

Charles Blomfield  was a New Zealand decorator, artist and music teacher born in London, England.

A widow, Blomfield's mother brought her family to New Zealand in the 1860's intending to settle in Northland as part of a settlement called Albertland. On arrival in Auckland they decided not to proceed on Northland to become farmers but to pursue urban trades in Auckland. The family remained in Auckland after that and many of the descendants of the various children still reside in the Auckland area.

Charles Blomfield lived in Freeman's Bay - 40 Wood Street, in a house built by his brother and allegedly made out of the timber from one large Kauri tree. As well as an exhibiting easel painter Blomfield worked as a sign-writer and interior decorator; for this trade he maintained studios in shops at various times. These were usually on Karangahape Road, one of these was shared with his daughter who made a living painting floral pieces which she also exhibited at the Auckland Society of Arts.

Blomfield travelled throughout the centre of the North Island on several occasions in the 1870s and 80s creating many landscape paintings of the New Zealand countryside, often for sale to visitors to New Zealand.  He painted several times Mount Manaia and under different angles (see the painting already posted).He was fortunate to viewas well the famed Pink and White Terraces several times and paint them before they were destroyed by the eruption of Tarawera in 1886. His meticulous sketches and finished paintings are some of the main records of them (see above).  For the remainder of his life he was probably able to rely on new versions of his classic views of them to supplement his income.

His paintings are widely regarded as the epitome of 19th century New Zealand landscape art, although his work, like many of his contemporaries, fell out of fashion during the 20th century, only to be re-evaluated in the 1970s. He was unable to come to terms with developments in art and remained staunchly conservative and hostile to 'modern art'. In his later years he found himself increasingly sidelined by the artistic circles in Auckland which he had previously shone in and was probably embittered by this.

Blomfield died at his residence in Wood Street in 1926. He was survived by several children. One of his brothers, William, was a noted newspaper cartoonist.

KIYANJA / MOUNT BAKER BY VITTORIO SELLA

VITTORIO SELLA (1859-1943) 

Kiyanja or Mount Baker (4,844m- 15,892 ft) 

Uganda

1. In Mount Baker from the west,  1906,The Duke of the Abruzzi expedition 

2 In Mount Baker from Edward Peak,1906,The Duke of the Abruzzi expedition 

3. In Mount Baker, Lake on the west, 1906, The Duke of the Abruzzi expedition 

The mountain 
Kiyanja  or Mount Baker   (4,844m- 15,892 ft) is a mountain in the Rwenzori Mountains National Park in Uganda, 2.8 kilometres (1.7 mi) from the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the sixth highest mountain in Africa. Together with Mount Stanley and Mount Speke, it forms a triangle enclosing the upper Bujuku Valley. The nearest peak is Mount Stanley, which is 2.26 kilometres (1.40 mi) to the west. The mountains lie within an area called "The Mountains of the Moon".
Like all peaks in the Ruwenzori Range, Mount Baker has multiple jagged peaks along a ridge. The highest is Edward Peak. The ridge line of Mount Baker was first reached in January 1906 by the Austrian mountaineer Rubert Grauer accompanied by two British missionaries, H. E. Maddox and H. W. Tegart. In February of that year and again in April, the same rocky point was reached by an English expedition, including Alexander F. R. Wollaston, A. B. Wosnam, and M. Carruthers. The highest point of Mount Baker was finally climbed in June by an expedition led by the Duke of the Abruzzi, with Vittorio Sella  which climbed all peaks of the other five highest mountains of the Rwenzori (photo above)
The Bakonjo name for the mountain seems to have been (and currently is) "Kiyanja". On his June 1891 expedition into the Ruwenzori, Franz Stuhlmann observed the peak and named it either "Semper" or "Ngemwimbi".  The Duke of the Abruzzi renamed the mountain after Samuel Baker, a 19th-century British explorer who in 1864 was the first European to sight and visit Lake Albert, just northeast of the Ruwenzori Mountains, and who had reported to glimpse "great mountainous masses away in the distance, to the south of Lake Albert."

The artist
Vittorio Sella is a mountain italian climber and photographer who took his passion for mountains from his uncle, Quintino Sella, founder of the Italian Alpine Club.  He accomplished many remarkable climbs in the Alps, the first wintering in the Matterhorn and Mount Rose (1882) and the first winter crossing of Mont Blanc (1888) and Les Rouies (1900).
He took part in various expeditions outside Italy:
- Three in the Caucasus in 1889, 1890 and 1896 where a summit still bears his name;
- The ascent of Mount Saint Elias in Alaska in 1897;
- Sikkim and Nepal in 1899;
- Possibly climb Mount Stanley in Uganda in 1906 during an expedition to the Rwenzori;
- Recognition at  K2   in 1909;
- In Morocco in 1925.
During expeditions in Alaska, Uganda and Karakoram, he accompanied the Duke of Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia.
Sella continues the practice of climbing into his old age, completing his final attempt in the Matterhorn at the age of 76; a climb he had to interrupt the rise following an accident in which one of his guides injured. He died in his hometown during World War II.  His photographic collection is now managed by the Sella Foundation.
His photos mountain are still  considered today to be among the finest ever made.
Jim Curran believes that "Sella remains probably the greatest photographer of the mountain.  His name is synonymous with technical perfection and aesthetic refinement. "
The quality of the pictures of Vittorio Sella is partly explained by the use of a view camera 30 × 40 cm, despite the difficulty of the transportation of such a device, both heavy and fragile in places inaccessible; to be able to transport it safely, he had to make special pieces that can be stored in saddle bags.  His photographs have been widely distributed, either through the press or in the galleries, and were unanimously celebrated; Ansel Adams, who was able to admire thirty-one in an exhibition that was organized at Sella American Sierra Club, said they inspired him "a religious kind of sense of wonder."  Many of his pictures were taken in the mountains for the very first time in the History, which give them a much artistic, historical  but also scientific value ; for example, one could measure the decline in the Rwenzori glaciers in Central Africa.

CIRQUE D'ESTAUBÉ BY THEODORE ROUSSEAU

THEODORE ROUSSEAU (1812-1867)

Cirque d'Estaubé (1,800m - 3,280ft)

France (Occitanie) 

In the Pyrenees (Vue du Cirque d'Estaubé  en été ?), oil on paper laid on canvas,

 Portland Art Museum 

The cirque 
Le cirque d'Estaubé  (1800m- )est un cirque naturel des Pyrénées dans le département des Hautes-Pyrénées. Sa ligne de crête définit en partie la frontière franco-espagnole. Il protège une petite plaine, le plã d'Ailhet, au fond de la vallée d'Estaubé.  Les Principaux sommets de la crête  sont
le pic Rouge de Pailla (2 780 m) ;le grand Astazou (3 071 m) ; le pic de Tuquerouye ou pic de Tuquerouge (2 819 m) ; le pic de Pinède (2 860 m) ; le pic Blanc (2 828 m) ; le pic de la Canau (2 766 m) ; le soum de Port Bieil (2 846 m) ; les pics d'Estaubé (2 810 m).

The painter 

Etienne- Pierre-Théodore Rousseau was a French painter of the Barbizon school.  Not to be confused with Henri Rousseau (called Le Douanier), he was born in Paris, of a bourgeois family and received  at first a business training, but soon displayed aptitude for painting.  The influence of classically trained artists was against  Rousseau and its paintings had to wait until 1848 before to be presented adequately to the public.

In 1848, Rousseau took up his residence in the forest village of Barbizon, and spent most of his remaining days in the vicinity. He was now able to obtain fair sums for his pictures (but only about one-tenth of their value thirty years after his death), and the number of his admirers increased. He was still ignored by the authorities, for while Narcisse Virgilio Diaz was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1851,  Rousseau was left undecorated at this time, but was nominated and awarded the Cross soon afterwards. 

At the Exposition Universelle of 1853, where all Rousseau's rejected pictures of the previous twenty years were gathered together, his works were acknowledged to form one of the best of the many splendid groups there exhibited. But, after an unsuccessful sale of his works by auction in 1861, he contemplated leaving Paris for Amsterdam or London, or even New York. Rousseau's pictures are always grave in character, with an air of exquisite melancholy. They are well finished when they profess to be completed pictures, but Rousseau spent so much time developing his subjects that his absolutely completed works are comparatively few. He left many canvases with parts of the picture realized in detail and with the remainder somewhat vague; and also a good number of sketches and water-color drawings. His pen work in monochrome on paper is rare. There are a number of good pictures by him in the Louvre, and the Wallace collection contains one of his most important Barbizon pictures. There is also an example in the Ionides collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

THE THREE SISTERS (OREGON) BY ELIZA BARCHUS

ELIZA BARCHUS (1857-1959)

 The Three Sisters :  

South or Charity (3,158.5 m - 10,363 ft)

Middle or Hope (3,063.7 m - 10,052 ft) 

North or Faith (3,075.3 m - 10,090 ft) 

United States of America (Oregon) 

In Three Sisters, ca. 1890, oil on canvas, Portland Art  Museum 

The mountains 
The Three Sisters are volcanic peaks that form a complex volcano in the U.S. state of Oregon. They are part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Cascade Range in western North America extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. Each more than 10,000 feet (3,000 m) in elevation, they are the third, fourth and fifth-highest peaks in Oregon. Located in the Three Sisters Wilderness at the boundary of Lane and Deschutes counties and the Willamette and Deschutes national forests, they are about 10 miles (16 km) south of the nearest town, Sisters. Diverse species of flora and fauna inhabit the area, which is subject to frequent snowfall, occasional rain, and extreme temperature variation between seasons. The mountains, particularly South Sister, are popular destinations for climbing and scrambling.
Although they are often grouped together as one unit, the three mountains have their own individual geology and eruptive history. Neither North Sister (also called Faith) nor Middle Sister (also called Hope )has erupted in the last 14,000 years. South Sister (also called Charity)  alst erupted about 2,000 years ago and might erupt in the future, threatening life within the region. After satellite imagery detected tectonic uplift near South Sister in 2000, the United States Geological Survey improved monitoring in the immediate area.
The Three Sisters area was occupied by Amerindians since the end of the last glaciation, mainly the Northern Paiute to the east and Molala to the west. They harvested berries, made baskets, hunted, and made obsidian arrowheads and spears. Traces of rock art can be seen at Devils Hill, south of South Sister. The first Westerner to discover the Three Sisters was the explorer Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson Bay Company in 1825.

The painter 
Eliza Barchus was an American landscape painter who lived in Portland for most of her life.
After taking art lessons from another landscape painter, Will S. Parrott, Barchus sold her first painting in 1885. Between then and 1935, she produced thousands of oil paintings and reproductions of subjects such as Mount Hood, Yellowstone Falls, Muir Glacier, and San Francisco Bay.
Barchus, who had won medals at Mechanics Fairs in Portland in the late 1880s, drew national attention in 1890, when one of her large canvases of Mount Hood was displayed at the National Academy of Design exhibition in New York City. In 1901, several of her works were shown at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and in 1905 she won a gold medal at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland for oil paintings of Pacific coast scenery.
Widowed in 1899, Barchus supported herself and her family for decades largely by selling or trading her art. Several years after her death at age 102, the Oregon Legislative Assembly named her "The Oregon Artist". Many art collections in Portland and elsewhere include examples of her work.

BEN CRUACHAN BY THOMAS MILES RICHARDSON II

THOMAS MILES RICHARDSON II (1813-1890) 

Ben Cruachan (1,126 m- 3,964 ft)

United Kingdom (Scotland) 

  In Ben Cruachan, Loch Etive, 1836, watercolour and gouache, with graphite and gum arabic on brown paper, Portland Art museum 

The mountain 

Ben Cruachan (1,126 m- 3,964 ft) is the highest point in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It gives its name to the Cruachan Dam, a pumped-storage hydroelectric power station located in a cavern inside the mountain, Cruachan! is the battle cry for Highland clans Campbell and MacIntyre. It is the high point of a ring of mountains, known as the Cruachan Horseshoe, that surrounds the power station reservoir. The horseshoe includes a further Munro (Stob Diamh), a Corbett (Beinn a' Bhuiridh), and several subsidiary summits.

 The painter 

Thomas Miles Richardson  was an English landscape-painter whose first notable picture was a ‘View of Newcastle from Gateshead Fell,’  purchased by the Newcastle corporation. In 1816 he began to illustrate with aquatints his brother's ‘Collection of Armorial Bearings … in the Chapel of St. Andrew, Newcastle-upon-Tyne’ which was published in 1818, and followed in 1820 by a larger work dealing with the church of St. Nicholas. In 1833 and 1834 he was engaged on a work on the ‘Castles of the English and Scottish Borders’ which he illustrated with mezzotints. These publications remained unfinished. Richardson became well known as a contributor to London exhibitions from 1818, when he sent his first picture to the Royal Academy, and was elected a member of the New Watercolour Society. His work was represented in public galleries at South Kensington, at Dublin, and at Liverpool.

MOUNT ASHIGARA / 足柄山 BY TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI / 月岡 芳年

TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI / 月岡 芳年 (1839-1892)  

Mount Ashigara / 足柄山  (1,215m- 3,978ft) 

Japan 

In Ashigarayama no tsuki u (Moon over Mount Ashigara), 1889.

The mountain 
Mount Ashigara (足柄山) (1,215m- 3,978ft) , also known as Mount Kintoki (金時山), is the northernmost peak of the Hakone caldera, on the border of Kanagawa and Shizuoka prefectures, in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park in Japan. Ashigara is not a remnant of the collapse of the old Hakone volcano itself, but rather a parasitic cone growing from its flank.
Mount Ashigara is the legendary birthplace of Kintarō.
The kanji of the mountain's name mean "Leg Handle Mountain"

The artist
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡 芳年) also named Taiso Yoshitoshi (大蘇 芳年) was a Japanese artist.
He is widely recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. He is also regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.
By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.
His reputation has only continued to grow, both in the West, and among younger Japanese, and he is now almost universally recognized as the greatest Japanese artist of his era.

LAGAZUOI PAINTED BY GEORGE INNESS

 GEORGE INNESS (1825-1884) 

Lagazuoi (2,835m- 9,301ft) 

Italy

 In Apezzo Pass, Titian's House, 1876, oil on canvas,  Portland Art Museum

The mountain

Lagazuoi  (2,835m- 9,301ft) is a mountain in the Dolomites of northern Italy, about 18 kilometres (11 mi) southwest by road from Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Veneto Region. It is accessible by cable car and contains the Rifugio Lagazuoi, a mountain refuge situated beyond the northwest corner of Cima del Lago. The mountain range is well known for its wartime tunnels and First World War mine warfare. The extensive tunnels were built by the Italian troops trying to wrest control from Austro-Hungarian troops who also built tunnels. The tunnels are now open as a de facto museum.

The painter 

 George Inness was one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, often called "the father of American landscape painting"  . He was influenced, in turn, by the Old Masters, the Hudson River school, the Barbizon school, and, finally, the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose spiritualism found vivid expression in the work of Inness's maturity (1879–1894). Although Inness’s style evolved through distinct stages over a prolific career that spanned more than forty years and 1,000 paintings, his works consistently earned acclaim for their powerful, coordinated efforts to elicit depth of mood, atmosphere, and emotion. Neither pure realist nor impressionist, Inness was a transitional figure who intended for his works to combine both the earthly and the ethereal in order to capture the complete essence of a locale. A master of light, color, and shadow, he became noted for creating highly ordered and complex scenes that often juxtaposed hazy or blurred elements with sharp and refined details to evoke an interweaving of both the physical and the spiritual nature of experience. In Inness’s words, he attempted through his art to demonstrate the "reality of the unseen” and to connect the "visible upon the invisible."

Within his own lifetime, art critics hailed Inness as one of America's greatest artists. Inness is best known for his mature works that not only exemplified the Tonalist movement but also displayed an original and uniquely American style.

MOUNT ST HILARION BY DAVID BOMBERG

DAVID BOMBERG (1890-1957) 

Mount St Hilarion (732 m - 2,401 ft)

Cyprus

 In Mount St Hilarion- Cyprus, oil on canvas, 

The hill

Mount St Hilarion (732 m - 2,401 ft)  is the name of the hill where the Saint Hilarion Castle was built. it  lies on the Kyrenia mountain range, in Cyprus. This location provided the castle with command of the pass road from Kyrenia to Nicosia. It is the best preserved ruin of the three former strongholds in the Kyrenia mountains, the others being Kantara and Buffavento.

The castle is not named after St. Hilarion, active in Palestine and Cyprus in the 4th century. It was named after an obscure saint, who is traditionally held to have fled to Cyprus after the Arab conquest of the Holy Land and retired to the hilltop on which the castle was built for hermitage. 

Starting in the 11th century, the Byzantines began fortification. Saint Hilarion formed the defense of the island with the castles of Buffavento and Kantara against Arab pirates raiding the coast. Some sections were further upgraded under the Lusignan rule, who may have used it as a summer residence. During the rule of Lusignans, the castle was the focus of a four-year struggle between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Regent John d' Ibelin for control of Cyprus.

The painter 

David Garshen Bomberg  was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. He was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington.[  Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between the senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time.

Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing a more expressionist technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe.
From 1945 to 1953, he worked as a teacher at Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University) in London, where his pupils included Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Philip Holmes, Cliff Holden, Edna Mann, Dorothy Mead, Gustav Metzger, Dennis Creffield, Cecil Bailey and Miles Richmond. David Bomberg House, one of the student halls of residences at London South Bank University, is named in his honor.

MOUNT HOOD / WY'EAST BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)

Mount Hood  / Wy 'east (3,429m - 11, 249ft)
United States of America (Oregon) 

 In Mount Hood, 1869, oil on canvas,  Portland Art Museum

About this Painting

In Mount Hood, Bierstadt characteristically exaggerates the height of the mountain and includes several landscape elements that could not be viewed from a single site along the Columbia River Gorge. For example, Mount Hood is painted as though seen from the northern shore of the Columbia River and Multnomah Falls, but the profile of the mountain is actually the one seen from Portland, and featured in a Childe Hassam painting nearby. The drama and monumentality of the far West, as a metaphor, was more important to Bierstadt than geographic accuracy.

In Notice from he Portland Art Museum 

The mountain 

 Mount Hood (3,429m - 11, 249ft) called Wy'east by the Multnomah tribe, is a potentially active stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc of northern Oregon. It was formed by a subduction zone on the Pacific coast and rests in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located about 50 miles (80 km) east-southeast of Portland, on the border between Clackamas and Hood River counties. In addition to being Oregon's highest mountain, it is one of the loftiest mountains in the nation based on its prominence.

The height assigned to Mount Hood's snow-covered peak has varied over its history. Modern sources point to three different heights: 11,249 feet (3,429 m), a 1991 adjustment of a 1986 measurement by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey,  11,240 feet (3,426 m) based on a 1993 scientific expedition,and 11,239 feet (3,425.6 m) of slightly older origin. 

The peak is home to 12 named glaciers and snowfields. It is the highest point in Oregon and the fourth highest in the Cascade Range. Mount Hood is considered the Oregon volcano most likely to erupt, though based on its history, an explosive eruption is unlikely. Still, the odds of an eruption in the next 30 years are estimated at between 3 and 7 %, so the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) characterizes it as "potentially active", but the mountain is informally considered dormant.

The painter 

Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents. He later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth. 

In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.

Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for the romanticism evident in his choices of subject and his use of light was felt to be excessive. 

In 1882 Bierstadt's studio at Irvington, New York, was destroyed by fire, resulting in the loss of many of his paintings. By the time of his death on February 18, 1902, the taste for epic landscape painting had long since subsided. Bierstadt was then largely forgotten. He was buried at the Rural Cemetery in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Interest in his work was renewed in the 1960s, with the exhibition of his small oil studies. The subsequent reassessment of Bierstadt's work has placed it in a favorable context.

Bierstadt's theatrical art, fervent sociability, international outlook, and unquenchable personal energy reflected the epic expansion in every facet of western civilization during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Bierstadt was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 paintings during his lifetime. Many of these are held by museums across the United States.

PUY DE LA TACHE BY CAMILLE COROT

CAMILLE COROT  (1796-1875) 

Puy de la Tache (1,629m - 5,344 ft) 

France (Auvergne) 

About the painting
This painting by Corot entitled  Montagnes d'Auvergne is probably the Puy de la Tache (Puy of the Task) not to be confused with Puy de la Vache  (Puy of the Cow) also painted by Corot in his series untitled Montagnes d'Auvergne. Those attributions, however, must be taken with care, nothing more like an Auvergne volcano than another Auvergne volcano !

The mountain 
The Puy de la Tache (1,629m - 5,344 ft) is located in the Massif Central in the Puy de Dôme department. and is part of the Chaine des Puy. which are ancient volcanoes.  It dominates the pass of the Cross Morand. A short walk back and forth from the pass allows you to climb to the top. No difficulty apart steep slope in places but the climb is done without any problem. Nice view of Lake Guéry and many other volcanoes when the sky is clear. You can also extend the hike by following the ridges and climbing on several other volcanoes.

The painter 

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching,  is a pivotal figure in landscape painting.  His vast output simultaneously refers the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.

Camille Corot, no doubt attracted by the mythical aspect of Monte Soratte, painted it several times during his first stay in Italy between 1825 and 1830.  Three of these representations are published in this blog today; although all painted  between 1826 and 1827, they are very different from each other, they were painted at different times of the year ant different hours of the day as he used to do.  The first presented here, apparently painted during summertime, has an almost Cézanian appearance !

Indeed, with his parents' support, Corot followed the well-established pattern of French painters who went to Italy to study the masters of the Italian Renaissance and to draw the crumbling monuments of Roman antiquity.  A condition by his parents before leaving was that he paint a self-portrait for them, his first.  During  his stay in Italy, Corot completed over 200 drawings and 150 paintings !   

Corot learned little from the Renaissance masters (though later he cited Leonardo da Vinci as his favorite painter) and spent most of his time around Rome and in the Italian countryside.  The Farnese Gardens with its splendid views of the ancient ruins was a frequent destination, and he painted it at three different times of the day, like Monte Soratte.  The training was particularly valuable in gaining an understanding of the challenges of both the mid-range and panoramic perspective, and in effectively placing man-made structures in a natural setting.   He also learned how to give buildings and rocks the effect of volume and solidity with proper light and shadow, while using a smooth and thin technique.  

In his aversion to shocking color, Corot sharply diverged from the up-and-coming Impressionists, who embraced experimentation with vivid hues.

The works of Corot are housed in museums in France and the Netherlands, Britain, North America and Russia.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

CHAPMAN'S PEAK BY DOUGLAS TREASURE

DOUGLAS TREASURE (1917 -1995) 

Chapman's Peak (592 m- 1,909 ft)

South Africa

 In  Boats in Hot bay with Chapman's peak in the mist, watercolour, 1950 

The mountain 
Chapman's Peak (592 m- 1,909ft ) is the name of a mountain on the western side of the Cape Peninsula, between Hout Bay and Noordhoek in Cape Town, South Africa. The western flank of the mountain falls sharply for hundreds of metres into the Atlantic Ocean, and a spectacular road, known as Chapman's Peak Drive, hugs the near-vertical face of the mountain, linking Hout Bay to Noordhoek.  Chapman's Peak is named after John Chapman, the pilot of an English ship becalmed in today's Hout Bay in 1607. The skipper sent his pilot ashore to find provisions, and the name was recorded as Chapman's Chaunce.
Chapman's Peak Drive was hacked out of the face of the mountain between 1915 and 1922, and at the time was regarded as a major feat of engineering.  The road was closed in the 1990s, after a rockfall caused a death and a subsequent lawsuit,  and was reopened  in 2005 as a toll road.

The painter 
Douglas Treasure obtained his formal training at the Port Elisabeth School of Art. A commercial art career included extensive experience as a illustrator, designer, visualiser and finally art director of a major company. During this time his love of watercolour landscape painting flourished, and in 1973 he retired from advertising in order to become a full-time professional painter. Douglas Treasure is the only South African represented in best selling British Author Ron Ransom's new book, Watercolour Impressionists. His works are represented in private collections in England, America, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Australia and Argentina.

AKNA MOUNTES BY NASA MAGELLAN MISSION

NASA MAGELLAN MISSION (1989-1994) 

Akna Mountes (6,000 m / 6km - 19, 685ft / 3, 72mi)

VENUS

The mountain
Akna Montes are a mountain range on Venus centered at 68.9°N, 318.2°E and stretching 830 km long. It is culminating at 6,000 m / 6km -  19, 685ft / 3, 72mi). The Akna range is a north-south trending ridge belt that forms the western border of the elevated smooth plateau of Lakshmi Planum. The Lakshmi plateau plains are formed by extensive volcanic eruptions and are bounded by mountain chains on all sides. The plains appear to be deformed near the mountains. This suggests that some of the mountain building activity occurred after the plains formed. On the Magellan radar image  (above) of the northern portion of the Akna Montes, the round feature is the crater Wanda.

The mission
Magellan was launched on May 4, 1989, at 18:46:59 UTC by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from KSC Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis during mission STS-30. Once in orbit, the Magellan and its attached Inertial Upper Stage booster were deployed from Atlantis and launched on May 5, 1989 01:06:00 UTC, sending the spacecraft into a Type IV heliocentric orbit where it would circle the Sun 1.5 times, before reaching Venus 15 months later on August 10, 1990.
Originally, the Magellan had been scheduled for launch in 1988 with a trajectory lasting six months. However, due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, several missions, including Galileo and Magellan, were deferred until shuttle flights resumed in September 1988. Magellan was planned to be launched with a liquid-fueled, Centaur-G upper-stage booster, carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle. However, the entire Centaur-G program was canceled after the Challenger disaster, and the Magellan probe had to be modified to be attached to the less-powerful Inertial Upper Stage. The next best opportunity for launching occurred in October 1989.
Further complicating the launch however, was the launching of the Galileo mission to Jupiter, one that included a fly-by of Venus. Intended for launch in 1986, the pressures to ensure a launch for Galileo in 1989, mixed with a short launch-window necessitating a mid-October launch, resulted in replanning the Magellan mission. Weary of rapid shuttle launches, the decision was made to launch Magellan in May, and into an orbit that would require one year, three months, before encountering Venus.
On August 7, 1990, Magellan encountered Venus and began the orbital insertion maneuver which placed the spacecraft into a three-hour, nine minute, elliptical orbit that brought the spacecraft 295-kilometers from the surface at about 10 degrees North during the periapsis and out to 7762-kilometers during apoapsis
On September 9, 1994, a press release outlined the termination of the Magellan mission. Due to the degradation of the power output from the solar arrays and onboard components, and having completed all objectives successfully, the mission was to end in mid-October. The termination sequence began in late August 1994, with a series of orbital trim maneuvers which lowered the spacecraft into the outermost layers of the Venusian atmosphere to allow the Windmill experiment to begin on September 6, 1994.