THABANA NTLENYANA PAINTED (2) BY JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEFF

JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEF (1886-1957)

Thabana Ntlenyana (3, 482m - 11, 424ft) 

South Africa, Lesotho 

In Maluti Mountains at Ficksburg , oil on canvas, 1910

The mountain
Thabana Ntlenyana  (3,482m - 11, 424ft)  which literally means "Beautiful little mountain" in Sesotho, is the highest point in Lesotho and the highest mountain in southern Africa. It is situated on the Mohlesi ridge of the Drakensberg/Maloti Mountains, north of Sani Pass.  The peak is usually climbed by groups completing a Grand Traverse of the Drakensberg - even though the peak is technically in the Maloti Mountains.
The Maloti Mountains, also spelled Maluti are a mountain range of the highlands of the Kingdom of Lesotho. They extend for about 100 km into the Free State. The Maloti Range is part of the Drakensberg system that includes ranges across large areas of South Africa. “Maloti” is also the plural for Loti, the currency of the Kingdom of Lesotho. The range forms the northern portion of the boundary between the Butha-Buthe District in Lesotho and South Africa’s Orange Free State.

The painter 
Jacobus Hendrik (Henk) Pierneef (usually referred to as Pierneef)  was a South African landscape artist, generally considered to be one of the best of the old South African masters. His distinctive style is widely recognized and his work was greatly influenced by the South African landscape.
Most of his landscapes were of the South African highveld, which provided a lifelong source of inspiration for him. Pierneef's style was to reduce and simplify the landscape to geometric structures, using flat planes, lines and colour to present the harmony and order in nature. This resulted in formalised, ordered and often-monumental view of the South African landscape, uninhabited and with dramatic light and colour.
Pierneef's work can be seen worldwide in many private, corporate and public collections, including the Africana Museum, Durban Art Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, King George VI Art Gallery, Pierneef Museum and the Pretoria Art Gallery.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

AIGUILLE DU DRU BY PIERRE TAIRAZ

PIERRE TAIRAZ (1933-2000) 

L'aiguille du Dru  (3,754 m -12,316 ft) 

France 

In L'Aiguille du Dru, Chamonix, France, Silver gelatin print  (140 x 30cm)
Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery London 

The peak 
The Aiguille du Dru  (3,754 m -12,316 ft) (also called Les Drus in French) is a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif in the French Alps. It is situated to the east of the village of Les Praz in the Chamonix valley. "Aiguille" means "needle" in French.
The mountain's highest summit is:
- Grande Aiguille du Dru (or the Grand Dru)
- Petite Aiguille du Dru (or the Petit Dru) 3,733 m.
The two summits are located on the west ridge of the Aiguille Verte (4,122 m) and are connected to each other by the Brèche du Dru (3,697 m). The north face of the Petit Dru is considered one of the six great north faces of the Alps. The southwest "Bonatti" pillar and its eponymous climbing route were destroyed in a 2005 rock fall.

The photographer 
Born in Chamonix, Pierre Tairraz, son, grandson and great-grandson of photographers, adheres very young to this instinct of the mountain and to this fabulous means of expression that the photography is. In the 50s, Pierre Tairaz studied at the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie Vaugirard (Paris) and also learns cinema at IDHEC (Paris). Following the family line, he continues photography, devotes himself to the profession of guide and also embarks on the footsteps of his father with the cinema at altitude. He takes part in many shootings. His career, starring an impressive number of high-altitude film shoots and photographic expeditions, continues to bring him closer to the mountain. Why photograph the mountain? "To testify of another world," answers Pierre Tairraz, "no artifice can match the creative power of nature." 
In this quest for harmony, each image becomes a symbol, the dream of an ideal architecture, a fantastic and grandiose utopia.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

OBSERVATION HILL BY EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON

EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON (1872-1912), 

Observation Hill (230m -754 ft) 

Antarctica  (Hut Point Peninsula)

 In Hut Point Midnight March 7, 1911- Terra nova expedition  Scott's Last Expedition", 

watercolor, 1913

The hill 

Observation Hill  (230m -754-ft) is a steep  hill adjacent to McMurdo Station in Antarctica and commonly called "Ob Hill." It is frequently climbed to get good viewing points across the continent. Regular clear skies give excellent visibility. 

Observation Hill is a lava dome and one of many volcanoes comprising the Hut Point Peninsula,  a long, narrow peninsula from 3 to 5 km (2 to 3 mi) wide and 24 km (15 mi) long, projecting south-west from the slopes of Mount Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica. McMurdo Station (US) and Scott Base (NZ) are Antarctic research stations located on the Hut Point Peninsula.

After their deaths in early 1912, the last members of Robert Falcon Scott's party were found by a search party led by the surgeon Edward L. Atkinson. The relief party took their photographic film, scientific specimens, and other materials. They had to leave Scott and his men in their tent, and later parties could not locate the campsite, since that area had been covered in snow. A century of storms and snow have covered the cairn and tent, which are now encased in the Ross Ice Shelf as it inches towards the Ross Sea. In 2001 glaciologist Charles R. Bentley estimated that the tent with the bodies was under about 75 feet (23 m) of ice and about 30 miles (48 km) from the point where they died; he speculated that in about 275 years the bodies would reach the Ross Sea, and perhaps float away inside an iceberg.
The search party returned to their base camp in McMurdo Sound to await the relief ship. After it arrived, they worked to build a memorial – a nine-foot wooden cross (see above), inscribed with the names of the fatal party and the final line of the Alfred Tennyson poem "Ulysses", which reads "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." On 22 January 1913, after a difficult two-day sledge journey, the cross was erected on the summit of Observation Hill, overlooking the camp and facing out towards the "Barrier" – the Ross Ice Shelf, on which Scott's party had died. In 1972, the cross was declared as one of the initial Historic Sites and Monuments in Antarctica by the Antarctic Treaty signatories, as HSM-20.

The artist
Edward Adrian Wilson,  nicknamed "Uncle Bill" was an English physician, polar explorer, natural historian, painter and ornithologist. Wilson took part in two British expeditions to Antarctica, the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904)  and the tragic Terra Nova Expedition (1907-1912), both under the leadership of Scott.
Dr. Edward A. Wilson  is widely regarded as one of the finest artists ever to have worked in the Antarctic. Sailing with Captain Scott aboard 'Discovery' (1901-1904), he became the last in a long tradition of 'exploration artists' from an age when pencil and water-colour were the main methods of producing accurate scientific records of new lands and animal species. He combined scientific, topographical and landscape techniques to produce accurate and beautiful images of the last unknown continent. Such was the strength of his work that it also helped to found the tradition of modern wildlife painting. In particular Wilson captured the essence of the flight and motion of Southern Ocean sea-birds on paper.
Returning with Captain Scott aboard 'Terra Nova' (1910-1913) as Chief of Scientific Staff, he continued to record the continent and its wildlife with extraordinary deftness. Chosen to accompany Captain Scott to the South Pole, his last drawings are from one of the most famous epic journeys in exploration history. Along with his scientific work, Wilson's pencil recorded the finding of Roald Amundsen's tent at the South Pole by Captain Scott. Wilson died, along with the other members of the British Pole Party, during the return journey, in March 1912. The drawings and paintings were created at considerable personal cost in the freezing conditions in which Wilson worked. He often suffered severely from the cold whilst sketching and also from snow-blindness, or sunburn of the eye. They provide a remarkable testament to one of the great figures of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. The book has been produced as a companion volume to 'Edward Wilson's Nature Notebooks' by two of Wilson's great nephews, to mark the centenary of his death.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes.

Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MUZTAGH TOWER BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947),
Muztagh Tower (7,276m - 23, 871ft) 

Pakistan - China border

In   Himalayas 1938, oil on canavs,  Nicolas Roerich  Museum, New York City

The mountain 

Muztagh Tower (7,276m - 23, 871ft), is a mountain in the Baltoro Muztagh, part of the Karakoram range in Baltistan on the border of the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. It stands between the basins of the Baltoro and Sarpo Laggo glaciers.
The Vittorio Sella's photographs of the Muztagh Tower in 1909  during the Italian Expediiton of the Duke of Abruzzi to K2,  inspired the first ascent.
Nearly fifty years after Sella's photo was taken, in 1956, his photograph inspired two expeditions to race for the first ascent. Both teams found their routes less steep than Sella's view had suggested. The British expedition, consisting of John Hartog, Joe Brown, Tom Patey and Ian McNaught-Davis, came from the Chagaran Glacier on the west side of the peak and reached the summit via the Northwest Ridge first on July 6, five days before the French team (Guido Magnone, Robert Paragot, André Contamine, Paul Keller) climbed the mountain from the east. The doctor François Florence waited for the two parties at the camp IV during 42 hours without a radio, when they went, reached the summit and came back to this camp.
Notable ascents and attempts:
- 1984: Northwest Ridge 2nd of route, 3rd of peak by Mal Duff, Tony Brindle, Jon Tinker and Sandy Allan (all UK).
- 1990: The fourth ascent was made by Gцran Kropp and Rafael Jensen.
- 2008: On 24 August 2008, the Northeast Face was climbed by two Slovenian alpinists, Pavle Kozjek and Dejan Miskovič. They bivouacked on the crest after 17 hours of climbing. They decided not to go to the summit because of strong wind. Just after they started descending, Kozjek fell to his death.
- 2012: On the day of 25 August, 56 years after the day when the first man climbed to the top of this mountain, three Russian alpinists made an ascent by the center Northeast Face. Sergei Nilov, Golovchenko Dmitry and Alexander Lange reached the top and made a new route. The ascent lasted for 17 days.

The painter 

Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих) is quite an important figure of mountain paintings in the early 20th century.  He was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure. In his youth was he was quite influenced by a movement in Russian society around the occult and was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices. His paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.

Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art. After the February Revolution of 1917 and the end of the czarist regime, Roerich, a political moderate who valued Russia's cultural heritage more than ideology and party politics, had an active part in artistic politics. With Maxim Gorky and Aleksandr Benois, he participated with the so-called "Gorky Commission" and its successor organization, the Arts Union (SDI).

Full Wandering Vertexes entry  =>

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT PEEL BY EDWYN TEMPLE

EDWYN TEMPLE (1835-1921)

Mount Peel   (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft) 

 New Zealand 

 

In Canterbury plain, New Zealand ( Mt Peel)

Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū

The mountain 
Mount Peel  often refered as Big Mount Peel   (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft) is a mountain located in South Canterbury, New Zealand. It consists of three peaks :  Big Mt Peel,  (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft),  Middle Mt Peel (1,583 m or 5,194 ft) and Little Mt Peel/Huatekerekere (1,311 m or 4,301 ft).
Mt Peel is  owned by the Department of Conservation and Mt Peel Station. It lies just south of the Rangitata river and is 22 kilometres (14 mi) north-west of Geraldine.
The Peel Forest Park Scenic Reserve is the largest in the Geraldine area, covering 769 hectares (1,900 acres) around Little Mt Peel/Huatekerekere.
The nearby forest was named by Francis Jollie, who settled in the area in late 1853. Jollie had named the forest after Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who had died in 1850, the year that Canterbury was founded. The mountain and the nearby community of Peel Forest also took Peel's name.
Mt Peel and the surrounding Peel Forest contain many well maintained and popular walking tracks.
Flora and fauna. There is lots of unique flora and fauna in Peel Forest. The three largest trees in Peel Forest belong to the family Podocarpaceae, a very ancient family going back in time more than 100 million years. The three large trees are kahikatea (white pine), tōtara, and mataī (black pine).
There are at least ten species of native bird occur in the forest including bellbird, silvereye, tomtit, rifleman, grey warbler, kererū, fantail, silvereye, shining cuckoo and longtailed cuckoo. There are also many lizards including the jeweled gecko and McCann's skink.

The artist 
 Edwyn Temple, or 'The Captain' as he was referred to by his friends and family, was born in England in 1835, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Temple and the grandson of Grenville Temple-Temple 9th Baronet of Stowe.  Educated at Rugby School, he entered the military services in 1853. During a brief period in Italy a relative, Princess Pondalfina, recognised his ability and engaged a tutor to teach him the rudiments of painting.
Temple was ensigned in 1854 and became a Captain in the 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Regiment in 1858. He later served in the Crimea and in India from 1864 to 1866. By that time he had married and the first of a family of nine children had been born. It was more than nine years after retiring from the army that he decided to emigrate with his wife and family to New Zealand, arriving in Lyttelton on 25 October 1879.
Within a very short time of his arrival, he was established and developed a network of ex-military friends in Christchurch. Some of these were among the group that got together in June 1880 to form the Canterbury Society of Arts. Temple's role in its formation cannot be overstated and, in acknowledgment of this, he was elected to the key role of Secretary/Treasurer of the Society.
In 1882 he moved to Geraldine to a property, 'Castlewood', which he had purchased the previous year. There he lived and farmed for almost three decades, a Justice of the Peace from 1883, but mostly concentrating on painting before retiring to live in Timaru in the 1900s.
There is no question that Temple had an inner drive. He was a compulsive sketcher who drew on any piece of paper readily at hand as the mood took him; letters, ledgers, telegrams, envelopes, even wrapping paper were all targets for his pen, pencil or brush. His imagination was fertile and, coupled with a sardonic wit, resulted in many lively and amusing drawings and paintings. Though he was not considered to be a professional artist in the accepted sense, he was serious in his endeavours with painting and his approach was nothing short of professional. To have spent the time to produce such a quantity of work, of which those in this exhibition are only a small representation, shows that he was not just engaged in a diverting pastime.
Between 1880 and 1892, which was his most active period as an artist in New Zealand, Temple made many trips over the South Island with his relative and friend James Dupré Lance of Horsley Down Station. He also travelled with the government Surveyor John H. Baker. It was during these trips that he made sketches that were later developed into more major paintings, many of which he regularly showed at either the Canterbury Society of Arts, or the Otago Art Society annual exhibitions where they often received favourable notice from contemporary reviewers.
Temple also exhibited beyond New Zealand, first in 1880 in Melbourne, then in 1886 at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition London. He was also represented at the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in Wellington in 1885 and the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition held in Dunedin in 1889–90.
He made return trips to England in 1892 and 1909 during which he made many landscape paintings.
Although the landscape was dominant in Temple's work, it was the alpine region of the South Island that particularly interested him and made him recognised in Canterbury as a specialist in this genre. Lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu were of special interest and these locales formed the backdrop to his imagery. From an early age Temple had visited Switzerland and the Lake District where several of his uncles had established themselves as gentry around Lake Ullswater and, in a sense, he had found a New Zealand equivalent to this experience. At the time of his death in 1920 Temple had amassed a considerable body of work that included paintings and drawings from his imagination that were pure fantasy as well as landscape, caricature and narrative subjects. Today, many hundreds of works are held by Temple's descendants scattered throughout the world but he is also represented in collections held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra; Hocken Library, Dunedin; Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Centre of Contemporary Art (incorporating Canterbury Society of Arts) Christchurch; as well as the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.

=> Courstesy Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT TAMBO BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

EUGENE VON GUERARD  (1811-1901)

Mount Tambo  (1,430 m - 4,692 ft)

Australia (Victoria) 

In  Mount Tambo  from Oemo Station, oil on canvas, 1862- National Gallery of Australia 

The mountain 
Mount Tambo (1,430 m - 4,692 ft) is a mountain located to the north-east of Omeo in Victoria, Australia. It lies within the boundaries of the 6,050 hectare Marble Gully.  The 2,740 hectare Mount Tambo Reserve was listed on the Register of the National Estate in 1990. Rare plant species found in Marble Gully – Mount Tambo Nature Conservation Reserve include Marble Daisy Bush, Delicate New Holland-daisy, and Limestone Pomaderris. To the near north-east is Little Mount Tambo (1,227 m). The headwaters from Deep Creek, which feeds in to the Tambo River, are on the south-east slopes.
While travelling with Georg Neumayer's expedition to Mount Kosciuszko in 1862, the painter Eugene von Guerard produced a sketch Mt Tambo & Omeo Swamps 10 Nov 62 and later an oil painting Mount Tambo from the Omeo Station 1862. (see above)

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.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

PAO DA AÇUCAR BY AGOSTINHO JOSE DA MOTA

AGOSTINHO JOSE DA MOTA (1824-1878)
 Pao de Açucar  / Sugarloaf mountain  (396 m - 1,299 ft)

Brazil

In  Vista da Gambo no Rio de Janeiro,1852, oil on canvas 

The mountain
Pao de Açucar  (396 m - 1299ft), Sugarloaf Mountain in english, Pain de Sucre in French,  is a isolated peak (Inselberg) situated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the mouth of Guanabara Bay on a peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. Rising above the harbor, its name is said to refer to its resemblance to the traditional shape of concentrated refined loaf sugar. It is known worldwide for its cableway and panoramic views of the city. The name "Sugarloaf" was coined in the 16th century by the Portuguese during the heyday of sugar cane trade in Brazil. According to historian Vieira Fazenda, blocks of sugar were placed in conical molds made of clay to be transported on ships. The shape given by these molds was similar to the peak, hence the name.

The painter 
Agostinho José da Mota was a painter, draftsman and Brazilian professor. Thus, in 1837, enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He was a brilliant student and for the merits and competence demonstrated, received the prize for a trip to Europe, in 1850. Returning to Brazil, in 1856, he is one of the founders of the Society Propagating Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro. Two years later, he  painted the portraits of the imperial couple - Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891) and Dona Teresa Cristina (1822 - 1889).
Most of Agostinho de Motta's artistic production consists of landscapes and still lifes. His representation of the Brazilian landscape is among the best that prints the values and standards of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (AIBA), in which he studied and later was professor, both in the formation of the idea of a national image, as well as in the formation of the image of the empire. Agostinho Mota did this for his artistic works, such as the portrait of the imperial couple and the records of the scene of the time.
The landscapes of Agostinho Motta are the most famous works of the artist. They stand out for the topographical precision, for the exact register of the dimensions of the scenarios and for the competence with which it captures the transpositions between the various colors that constitute its worked exteriors. The scenarios chosen by the artist demonstrate the marked dimension of the national identity that Agostinho Motta intended to portray in his paintings, as the Landscape of Rio de Janeiro, 1857, influenced by the canons of AIBA.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

EL CHIMBORAZO (2) BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT  (1769-1859)

Chimborazo  (6,263 m - 20,549  ft)

Ecuador

In   Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples Indigènes de l’Amérique

The mountain

Chimborazo  (6,263 m -20,548 ft) is a currently inactive stratovolcano in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes ans the highest mountain in Ecuador and the Andes north of Peru ; it is higher than any more northerly summit in the Americas. Chimborazo is not the highest mountain by elevation above sea level, but its location along the equatorial bulge makes its summit the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center.

Chimborazo is at the main end of the Ecuadorian Volcanic Arc, north west of the town of Riobamba. Chimborazo is in la Avenida de los Volcanes (the Avenue of Volcanoes) west of the Sanancajas mountain chain. Carihuairazo, Tungurahua, Tulabug, and El Altar are all mountains that neighbor Chimborazo.  The closest mountain peak, Carihuairazo, is 5.8 mi (9.3 km) from Chimborazo. There are many microclimates near Chimborazo, varying from desert in the Arenal to the humid mountains in the Abraspungo valley.

Its last known eruption is believed to have occurred around A.D. 550. 

Until the beginning of the 19th century, it was thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth (measured from sea level), and such reputation led to many attempts on its summit during the 17th and 18th centuries.

In 1746, the volcano was explored by French academicians from the  French Geodesic Mission. Their mission was to determine the sphericity of the Earth. Their work along with another team in Lapland established that the Earth was an oblate spheroid rather than a true sphere. They did not reach the summit of Chimborazo.

In 1802, during his expedition to South America, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, accompanied by Aimé Bonpland and the Ecuadorian Carlos Montufar, tried to reach the summit. From his description of the mountain, it seems that before he and his companions had to return suffering from altitude sickness they reached a point at 5,875 m, higher than previously attained by any European in recorded history. (Incans had reached much higher altitudes previously). In 1831, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault and Colonel Hall reached a new "highest point", estimated to be 6,006 m.

On 4 January 1880, the English climber Edward Whymper reached the summit of Chimborazo. The route that Whymper took up Chimborazo is now known as the Whymper route. Edward Whymper, and his Italian guides Louis Carrel and Jean-Antoine Carrel, were the first Europeans to summit a mountain higher than 20,000 feet. As there were many critics who doubted that Whymper had reached the summit, later in the same year he climbed to the summit again, choosing a different route (Pogyos) with the Ecuadorians David Beltrбn and Francisco Campaсa.

The cartographer 

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.

Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.

On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a While. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783.  Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.

Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit.  Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.

At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MONTE ROSA BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS ROFFIAEN

JEAN-FRANÇOIS ROFFIAEN ( 1820-1898) 

Pointe Dufour / Dufourspitze  (4,634 m - 7,103ft) 

Switzerland- Italy border  

In Sunrise on Monte Rosa seen from Riffelsee, Zermatt, oil on canvas  (72.5 x 118cm), 1871, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London 

About the painting 
In 1845 Roffiaen saw two paintings by Alexandre Calame at the Salon de Bruxelles. He was so impressed by them that the young Belgian was awarded a place to train in his new mentor’s Geneva studio for six months. His style and subject matter remained close to Calame’s throughout his life, but he travelled further afield to the Mediterranean. Roffiaen’s work was admired and collected by the royal families of Europe and this magnificent dawn view of Monte Rosa is probably the prototype version for a large two-and a half metre canvas, dated 1875, now in the Brussels museum together with several other pictures by him.

The mountain 
The  Pointe Dufour (4,634 m - 7,103ft), in german Dufourspitze, is the highest peak of Monte Rosa, (Mont Rose) a huge ice-covered mountain massif in the Alps. Dufourspitze is the highest mountain peak of both Switzerland and the Pennine Alps and is also the second-highest mountain of the Alps and Europe outside the Caucasus. It is located between Switzerland (Canton of Valais) and Italy (Piedmont and Aosta Valley). Following a long series of attempts beginning in the early nineteenth century, Monte Rosa's summit, then still called Hцchste Spitze, was first reached on 1 August, the Swiss National celebration day, in 1855 from Zermatt by a party of eight climbers led by three guides: Matthдus and Johannes Zumtaugwald, Ulrich Lauener, Christopher and James Smyth, Charles Hudson, John Birkbeck and Edward Stephenson.
The name Pointe Dufour or Dufour Spitze  replaced the former name Höchste Spitze (English: Highest Peak) that was indicated on the Swiss maps before the Federal Council, on January 28, 1863, decided to rename the mountain in honor of Guillaume-Henri Dufour. Dufour was a Swiss engineer, topographer, co-founder of the Red Cross and army general who led the Sonderbund campaign. This decision followed the completion of the Dufour Map, a series of military topographical maps created under the command of Dufour.
The point just 80 m (260 ft) east of the Dufourspitze and only 2 metres lower, the Dunantspitze, was renamed in 2014 in honor of Henry Dunant, the main founder of the Red Cross.

The painter 
Jean François Xavier Roffiaen was a Belgian landscape painter who specialized in painting Alpine landscapes. He followed his artistic studies at the Academy of Brussels (1839–1842), notably under the famous vedutiste, François Bossuet (1789–1889) who was responsible for teaching him perspective and who was the authority on landscapes and city views.
The years 1850–1860 were those of Roffiaen's  greatest success, including numerous sales in Belgium, in Great Britain and in the United States, having works acquired by the Shah of Persia, by the Belgian and British royal houses, a study tour of Scotland commissioned by Queen Victoria, but which unfortunately never took place because of the sudden death of Albert, Prince Consort.  His painting, constructed according to indefinitely repeated formulae and each year becoming a little more tired, finished however by wearying the art chroniclers : « Critics of the press have often reproached him for the bias he shows in his painting. M Roffiaen has ignored them, he has continued to accumulate landscapes of Belgium, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, what do I know, combing them without rest, using the same formula, making do with the same sky, the same trees, the same rocks, unconcerned by the latitudes, according to the taste of a special public, who buy all of that and pay him handsomely. Leave M. Roffiaen alone, gentlemen of the press, he paints his little nature scenes one demands of him and knows well the reason why. » 
(G. H., L’Organe de Namur et de la Province, 1874).
François Roffiaen is equally illustrious in the domain of natural sciences, to which Jules Colbeau (1823–1881) introduced him in his youth. While children the two companions already took delight in observing nature in the little property that Colbeau’s parents owned in the suburbs of Namur. Once adult, they took a journey together to Switzerland (1852) where they collected insects, butterflies and molluscs.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT KATAHDIN (2) BY MARSDEN HARTLEY

MARSDEN HARTLEY (1877-1943)

Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267ft)

United States of America (Maine)  

In Mount Katahdin, First Snow, oil on canvas

The mountain  

Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267 feet)  is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The mountain, being a mile above sea level, towers above the comparatively low Maine lakes and forests. Named Katahdin by the Penobscot Indians, which means "The Greatest Mountain", Katahdin is the centerpiece of Baxter State Park.  The official name is "Mount Katahdin" as decided by the US Board on Geographic Names in 1893. Among some Native Americans, Katahdin was believed to be the home of the storm god Pamola, and thus an area to be avoidedIt is a steep, tall mountain formed from a granite intrusion weathered to the surface. 

Katahdin was known to the Native Americans in the region, and was known to Europeans at least since 1689. It has inspired hikes, climbs, journal narratives, paintings, and a piano sonata. The area around the peak was protected by Governor Percival Baxter starting in the 1930s. Katahdin  is located near a stretch known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.

Katahdin is referred to 60 years after Field’s climb of Agiokochuk (Mount Washington) in the writings of John Gyles, a teenage colonist who was captured near Portland, Maine in 1689 by the Abenaki. While in the company of Abenaki hunting parties, he traveled up and down several Maine rivers including both branches of the Penobscot, passing close to “Teddon”. He remarked that it was higher than the White Hills above the Saco River.

The first recorded climb of "Catahrdin" was by Massachusetts surveyors Zackery Adley and Charles Turner, Jr. in August 1804.[14] In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau climbed Katahdin, which he spelled "Ktaadn"; his ascent is recorded in a well-known chapter of The Maine Woods. A few years later Theodore Winthrop wrote about his visit in Life in the Open Air. Painters Frederic Edwin Church and Marsden Hartley are well-known artists who created landscapes of Katahdin. 

In the 1930s Governor Percival Baxter began to acquire land and finally deeded more than 200,000 acres (809 km2) to the State of Maine for a park, named Baxter State Park after him. The summit was officially recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names as "Baxter Peak" in 1931.

The painter 
Marsden Hartley  was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.
Hartley began his art training at the Cleveland Institute of Art after his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1892.  He won a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art.
In 1898, at age 22, he moved to New York City to study painting at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase, and then attended the National Academy of Design. Hartley was a great admirer of Albert Pinkham Ryder and visited his studio in Greenwich Village as often as possible. His friendship with Ryder, in addition to the writings of Walt Whitman and American transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired Hartley to view art as a spiritual quest.
Hartley first traveled to Europe in April 1912, and he became acquainted with Gertrude Stein's circle of Avant-garde writers and artists in Paris.  Stein, along with Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson, encouraged Hartley to write as well as paint.
In 1913, Hartley moved to Berlin, where he continued to paint and befriended the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. He also collected Bavarian folk art.  His work during this period was a combination of abstraction and German Expressionism, fueled by his personal brand of mysticism.
In Berlin, Hartley developed a close relationship with a Prussian lieutenant, Karl von Freyburg. References to Freyburg were a recurring motif in Hartley's work, most notably in Portrait of a German Officer (1914). Freyburg's subsequent death during the war hit Hartley hard, and he afterward idealized their relationship. Many scholars believe Hartley to have been gay, and have interpreted his work regarding Freyburg as embodying his homosexual feelings for him.
Hartley finally returned to the U.S. in early 1916. He lived in Europe again from 1921 to 1930, when he moved back to the U.S. for good.  He painted throughout the country, in Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, and New York. He returned to Maine in 1937, after declaring that he wanted to become "the painter of Maine" and depict American life at a local level.  This aligned Hartley with the Regionalism movement, a group of artists active from the early- to-mid 20th century that attempted to represent a distinctly "American art." He continued to paint in Maine, primarily scenes around Lovell and the Corea coast, until his death in Ellsworth in 1943. His ashes were scattered on the Androscoggin River. Most of his mountains paintings of Maine are nowadays in the MET collections.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOTTARONE PAINTED BY MASOLINO DA PANICALE

MASOLINO DA PANICALE (1383-1447)

Mottarone (1,491 m - 4,892 ft)

Italy 

 In Paesaggio, Castiglione Olona, Laggo Maggiore, 1435, Fresco,  Palazzo Branda Castiglione

The painting 
This geographical representation of a landscape supposed to be that of the mountains around Lake Maggiore (Italy) and in particular of the town of Castiglione Olona (near Varese), is quite surprising for that time.  The painter wants to reproduce with accuracy the mountains peaks he can see from the shores of Lake Maggiore, which is not usual at that time, even if in Europe, the accuracy of the geographical representation  becomes  more and more a preoccupation  for painters. One can see examples, almost contemporary, in paintings by Enguerrand Quarton or by  Konrad Witz. 
Here we can recognize (among others we can't !), the Mottarone (left of the frame) with, in the distance, the view of the Alps and the Monte Rosa massif and its many peaks. The village of Castigione Olona  is planted in the middle of a kind of descending waterfall that does not exist on Lake Maggiore ! This is not geographically accurate, but it reflects at least the concerns and research about perspective of Masolino da Panicale, who was the first painter to make use of a central "Vanishing point" and probably the first artist to create oil paintings in the 1420s...

One of the mountains 
Mount Mottarone (1,491 m - 4,892 ft)  is located between Lake Maggiore and Lake Orta. The Mottarone is nowadays a place famous for its ski resort, its hiking possibilities and its views of Lake Maggiore, Orta and the Alps (Monte Rosa, Monviso ...).
Monte Rosa massif and Point Dufour peak : 
Full Wandering vertexes entry  =>

The Painter 
Masolino da Panicale (nickname of Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini)  was an Italian painter. His best known works are probably his collaborations with Masaccio: Madonna with Child and St. Anne (1424) and the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel (1424–1428).
Masolino was probably the first painter to make use of a central Vanishing point in his 1423 painting St. Peter Healing a Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha.
He may have been the first artist to create oil paintings in the 1420s, rather than Jan van Eyck in the 1430s, as was previously supposed.
This very innovative and inventive painter spent many years traveling, including a trip to Hungary from September 1425 to July 1427 under the patronage of Pipo of Ozora, a mercenary captain. He was selected by Pope Martin V (Oddone Colonna) on the return of the papacy to Rome in 1420 to paint the altarpiece for his family chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and later by Cardinal Branda da Castiglione to paint the Saint Catherine Chapel in the Basilica of San Clemente, Rome.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THE MONT BLANC PAINTED BY GUSTAVE-EUGÈNE CASTAN

GUSTAVE-EUGÈNE CASTAN (1823-1892)  

The Mont Blanc (4,808 m - 15,776.7 ft)
 France, Italy border

In Climbers ascending Mont Blanc via the Grands Mulets Glacier, Chamonix, France, 

oil on paper laid on canvas (38 x 57cm) signed, circa 1885 

Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London  

Notice from the John Mitchell Gallery's catalogue : 
Only a handful of glacier scenes exist by this classically trained Swiss painter, academician and printmaker. This fine study, made in oils on paper en plein air, is as fascinating as it is rare. Born in Geneva, Castan was a direct contemporary of Gabriel Loppé when they were both students of Alexandre Calame between 1844 and 1846. After an apprenticeship with Rodolphe Töpffer in Geneva, Castan travelled to Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland to study landscape with Calame. Castan’s friendship with Loppé lasted beyond those two summers and, in all likelihood, it was Loppé who took him up to the Grands Mulets to paint this scene. Having established himself as a regular participant at the Paris Salon between 1855 and 1882 Castan became a successful landscape painter inspired by Corot and Daubigny and is better known today for his views of the Normandy coastline. Indeed, there are no Salon records of any similar high Alpine scenes by him and this painting was surely done as a record of his expedition to the flanks of Mont Blanc. The spidery figures were perhaps a later addition by the painter even if their scale is in proportion to their surrounding glaciers and crevasses.

The painter  
The Swiss lithographer, landscape painter and engraver Gustave- Eugène Castan was   trained in the studio of Alexandre Calame, whom he accompanied in Italy in 1844, then, the following year, in the Bernese Oberland. During his studies, he became friends with the French painter Eugène Castelnau and followed him to Paris in 1849. In 1850, he visited France and met the painter Auguste Ravier and, in 1852, Corot, which has a decisive influence on him. In 1856, he was mobilized in the context of the Neuchâtel affair and drew current events. In 1857, he went to the Paris Salon, which he visited with Corot, then traveled through Brittany and Normandy. He then divides his life between Switzerland and France and often goes to the Berry where he becomes a familiar of George Sand. It is during one of these visits that she makes him discover the landscapes of the Creuse. He then goes there every year during the summer months and contributes to the birth of the "Valley of painters" and the Crozant school.
In 1865, Castan was a founding member of the Swiss Society of Painters and Sculptors, of which he was president in 1887.
 The emperor Napoleon III bought his painting A morning autumn, making Castan definitely famous.  He presented landscapes of Belgium, Normandy, Brittany, Dauphiné and Creuse. He also participated in the Vienna International Exhibition in 1873 and the Jubiläumsausstellung in Munich in 1888.

The mountain 
 Full Wandering Vertexes entry for Mont Blanc = > 

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT WHITNEY PAINTED BY GUY ROSE

GUY ROSE  (1867-1925) 

Mount Whitney  (4,421 m - 14,505 ft)

United States of America (California) 

 In Gathering Storm, High Sierra,  oil on canvas, circa 1916 , The  Crocker Art Museum,  Sacramento

The mountain 
Mount Whitney (4,421 m - 14,505 ft) is the tallest mountain in California, as well as the highest summit in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada.  It is in Central California, on the boundary between California's Inyo and Tulare counties. The west slope of the mountain is in Sequoia National Park and the summit is the southern terminus of the John Muir Trail which runs 211.9 mi (341.0 km) from Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley. The east slope is in the Inyo National Forest in Inyo County.
The rise is caused by a normal fault system that runs along the eastern base of the Sierra, below Mount Whitney. Thus, the granite that forms Mount Whitney is the same as the granite that forms the Alabama Hills, thousands of feet lower down.  The raising of Whitney (and the downdrop of the Owens Valley) is due to the same geological forces that cause the Basin and Range Province: the crust of much of the intermontane west is slowly being stretched.
In July 1864, the members of the California Geological Survey named the peak after Josiah Whitney, the State Geologist of California and benefactor of the survey.

 The painter 
The American Impressionist painter Guy Orlando Rose  was a California resident who received national recognition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His father was a prominent California senator. He and his wife raised their large family on an expansive Southern California ranch and vineyard – the San Gabriel Valley town of Rosemead bears the family name.
 In 1876 young Guy Rose was accidentally shot in the face during a hunting trip with his brothers. While recuperating he began to sketch and use watercolors and oil paints. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1884 and moved to San Francisco where he studied art between 1885 and 1888 at the School of Design with Virgil Williams, Warren E. Rollins, and the Danish-born artist Emil Carlsen.  On September 12, 1888, Rose enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris and studied with Benjamin-Constant, Jules Lefebvre, Lucien Doucet and Jean-Paul Laurens while in Paris. In 1888-89, he won a scholarship at the Académie Delacluse and contributed religious and figural studies as well as landscapes to the Paris Salons in 1890, 1891, 1894, 1900, and 1909. He met fellow students Frank Vincent and Frederick Melville at the Académie Julian – Frank Vincent and Guy Rose were to remain lifelong friends.
Rose lived in New York, New York in the 1890s and illustrated for Harper's, Scribners, and Century. Choosing to return to France in 1899, he and his wife Ethel Rose bought a cottage at Giverny. In 1900 he resided in Paris and spent the winter in Briska, Algeria where he painted three known paintings. From 1904 to 1912 husband and wife lived in Giverny and his works from this period show the influence of "the master" Claude Monet, who became his friend and mentor.
Full wikipedia entry  =>

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

SEMIEN MOUNTAINS BY HENRY SALT

HENRY SALT (1780-1827)

Ras Dejen (4,550  m - 14,927 ft)

Mounts Biuat (4,437 m - 14,557 ft)

Kidis Yared (4,453 m - 14,609ft)

Ethiopia

In  Near the village of Asceriah in Abbyssinia,  hand colored aquatints, 1809 

 The mountains
Ras Dejen (4,550 m), Mounts Biuat (4,437 m) and Kidis Yared (4,453 m) are part of the Semien Mountains , in northern Ethiopia, north east of Gondar in Amhara region, are part of the Ethiopian Highlands. They are a World Heritage Site and include the Simien Mountains National Park.
The mountains consist of plateaus separated by valleys and rising to pinnacles.
Because of their geological origins, the mountains are almost unique, with only South Africa's Drakensberg having been formed in the same manner and thus appearing similar. Notable animals in the mountains include the walia ibex, gelada, and caracal. There are a few Ethiopian wolves.
The Semien Mountains were formed prior to the creation of the Rift Valley, from lava outpourings between 40 and 25 million years ago during the Oligocene period. The volcano is believed to have spread over more than 5000 m2 and resulted in a thick sequence of basaltic lava some 3,000-3,500 m thick that was deposited on Precambrian crystalline basement. The major part of the Semien Mountains consists of remnants of a Hawaiian-type shield volcano. The Kidus Yared peak is situated near the center of the shield volcano. Ras Dejen (4,533 m), Bwahit (4,430 m) and Silki (4,420 m) were formed from the outer core of this ancient volcano.
The extreme escarpment in Semien appears to be a precondition for the formation of the extended uplift of the whole mountain massif 75 million years ago. The dramatic views are due to this volcanic activity. Especially of note is the 2,000 m high escarpment extending in a southwest-northeast direction.
There are different types of soils as a result of the difference in geological formation, glaciations, topography, and climate. The Humic Andosol is the dominant soil type which is mainly found at an altitude of 3,000 m. The other types of soil are shallow Andosols, Lithosols, and Haplic Phaeozems that are mainly common in the area between 2,500 and 3,500 m. The Semien Mountains are highly eroded as a result of human land use practices and as a result of the topography of the area.

The artist 
 Henry Salt  was an English artist, traveller, collector of antiquities, diplomat, and Egyptologist.
After a  time as a portrait painter, Salt was permitted to travel with the English nobleman George Annesley, Viscount Valentia as his secretary and draughtsman after being recommended by Thomas Simon Butt. They started on an eastern tour in June 1802, traveling on the British East India Company's extra (chartered) ship Minerva to India via the Cape Colony. In 1805, Valentia sent Salt on a journey into the Abyssinian area (now Ethiopia) to meet with the ras of Tigré to open up trade relations on behalf of the English.  While visiting there, Salt gained the respect of the ras. He returned to England on 26 October 1806. His journey home took him through Egypt where he met the pasha Mehmet Ali. Salt's paintings from the trip were used in Valentia's Voyages and Travels to India, published in 1809. The originals of all the drawings were kept by Valentia, as also the copper plates after Salt's death. The format and style of the plates is similar to Thomas and William Daniell's work, "Oriental Scenery" (1795-1808).
Salt returned to Ethiopia in 1809 on a government mission to explore trade and diplomatic links with the Tigrayan warlord Ras Wolde Selassie. Upon arrival, he was unable to meet with the king due to unrest in the country, so instead he went to stay with his friend the ras of Tigré. During this venture, Salt took on the side mission of verifying and correcting the information about the region reported by the Scottish traveler, James Bruce many years earlier.  Salt came back to England in 1811 with numerous specimens of both plants and animals.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MONT THALETAT BY FRANCISQUE NOAILLY

FRANCISQUE NOAILLY (1855-1942) 

Thaletat (1,638m -5,374ft)
Algeria

In Montagnes de Kabylie , oil on canvas, 1908 

The mountain 

Thaletat (1,638m -5,374ft) ) is one of the Djurdjura peaks in Kabylie (Algeria). Thaletat is located in the Akouker Massif which occupies the center of the Djurdjura range. To the north, its rocks drop almost a single jet on the valley of Timeghras. To the south, it is dominated by the Lalla-Khadidja cone, the highest peak of the Tellian Atlas. The word Thaletat means "auricular" in Kabyle. The French gave the mountain the name "Hand of the Jew" because, according to the natives, its appearance of a six-fingered hand. According to legend, the mount was the place of prayer of a Jewish ascetic.

The painter 
Louis François Marie Noailly, known as Francisque Noailly, was born in Marseille in 1855. After studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, he studied with William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
From 1875, he performed his military service in Algeria in the Zouaves regiment. He gets married in Algiers and installs his workshop in the district of La Redoute.From its wide windows, the view stretched from Bouzaréah to Cape Matifou and plunged into the port which he could look at without ever being dazzled except by the beauty of the view.
Landscapes, portraits and especially scenes typical of Algerian life are treated with the same talent. The port, the city, the streets of the Algiers' Kasbah, the indigenous interiors and the Jebel are the frames. Vendor of donuts, child guiding a blind man, women returning from the source to their mechta, odalisques in a Moorish court, small trades ... these are his subjects. In his paintings, oil or watercolors, he plays with shadows, light and against the light: dockers unloading a swing or woman weaving a carpet.
He taught for many years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, rue des Généraux Morris, and was responsible, as director and professor, for the School of Decorative and Industrial Arts. A contemporary of Rochegrosse, Deshayes, Etienne Dinet and many others, he was part of the Orientalist painters' society and in 1935 received the first painting prize, Léon Cauvy, awarded by the Artistic Union of North Africa.
Francisque Noailly died in his house in Algiers, surrounded by his family, and left the memory of a right and sensitive man who hide his feelings under a grumpy aspect.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

NEREIDUM MONTES BY ESA MARS EXPRESS

ESA MARS EXPRESS (2003-2020?) 

Nereidum Mons (no elevation data)  

 MARS  (Argyre quadrangle) 

The Mountains 
The Nereidum Montes is a mountain range on planet Mars. It stretches 3,677 km, northeast of Argyre Planitia. It is in the Argyre quadrangle. The mountains are named after a Classical albedo feature.
There is a crater at 45.1°S, 55.0°W on the Nereidum Montes that is similar to Galle in that it also has a smiley face pattern on the crater. However, it is much smaller than Galle itself.
A hummocky relief resembling Veiki moraines has been found in Nereidum Montes. The relief is hypothesized to result very much like Veiki moraines from the melting of a martian glacier.

The mission 
Mars Express is a space probe of the European Space Agency (ESA) launched on June 2, 2003 to study the planet Mars. This is the first exploration mission of another planet in the solar system launched by the European Agency.  Mars Express is developed in a relatively short period of time by partially taking over the architecture of the Rosetta probe while five of the seven instruments were developed for the Soviet Mars 96 probe.
It was launched on June 2, 2003 by a Soyuz rocket and is in orbit around Mars on December 25 of the same year.  Mars Express has obtained many scientific results: determination of the nature of polar ice caps and estimation of the volume of stored water, composition of the Martian atmosphere and its interactions with the solar wind, observation of the seasonal cycle of water , three-dimensional mapping of the reliefs, detection of hydrated minerals proving the presence of water in the past over long periods on the surface and mapping of the regions concerned, detection of the presence of water in the liquid state under the ice cap of the South Pole . The mission of an initial duration of 23 months has been extended several times and must now be completed by the end of 2020.

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

TSURUGI SAN / TOKUSHIMA / 剣山 BY HIROSHI YOSHIDA / 吉田 博

HIROSHI YOSHIDA / 吉田 博 (1876-1950),

Mount Tsurugi or Tokushima / 剣山  (1,954m - 6, 413ft)

Japan 

In Tsurugi san,  woodblock Print,  c. 1936 

The mountain
Mount Tsurugi   or Tokushima  (1,954m - 6, 413ft)  ( in japanese 剣山 Tsurugi-san), meaning sword, is a mountain on the border of Miyoshi, Mima and Naka in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan. This mountain is one of the 100 Famous Japanese Mountains. Mount Tsurugi is the second highest mountain on the island of Shikoku, and also the second highest mountain west of Mount Haku, which is on the border of Ishikawa and Gifu prefectures in central Japan.
Mount Tsurugi is an important object of worship in this region and one of the centers of Shugendō, a sect of mixture of Shintoism and Buddhism. On the top of the mountain, there is a small shrine called ‘Tsurugi Jinja’. The area around Mount Tsurugi is a major part of Tsurugi Quasi-National Park.

The painter 

Hiroshi Yoshida / 吉田 博(not to be confused with Toshi Yoshida) was born in 1876. He began his artistic training with his adoptive father in Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture. Around the age of twenty, he left Kurume to study with Soritsu Tamura in Kyoto, subsequently moving to Tokyo and the tutelage of Shotaro Koyama. Yoshida studied Western-style painting, winning many exhibition prizes and making several trips to the United States, Europe and North Africa selling his watercolors and oil paintings. In 1902, he played a leading role in the organization of the Meiji Fine Arts Society into the Pacific Painting Association. His work was featured in the exhibitions of the state-sponsored Bunten and Teiten. While highly successful as an oil painter and watercolor artist, Yoshida turned to printmaking upon learning of the Western world’s infatuation with ukiyo-e.

Following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Yoshida embarked on a tour of the United States and Europe, painting and selling his work. When he returned to Japan in 1925, he started his own workshop, specializing in landscapes inspired both by his native country and his travels abroad. Yoshida often worked through the entire process himself: designing the print, carving his own blocks, and printing his work. His career was temporarily interrupted by his sojourn as a war correspondent in Manchuria during the Pacific War. Although he designed his last print in 1946, Yoshida continued to paint with oils and watercolors up until his death in 1950.

Yoshida was widely traveled and knowledgeable of Western aesthetics, yet maintained an allegiance to traditional Japanese techniques and traditions. Attracted by the calmer moments of nature, his prints breathe coolness, invite meditation, and set a soft, peaceful mood. All of his lifetime prints are signed “Hiroshi Yoshida” in pencil and marked with a jizuri (self-printed) seal outside of the margin. Within the image, most prints are signed “Yoshida” with brush and ink beside a red “Hiroshi” seal.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

TRANGO TOWERS BY VITTORIO SELLA

VITTORIO SELLA (1859-1943)

Trango Towers  (6,286 m - 23, 871ft) 

Pakistan

1. In The Baltoro Tower 1909's Himalaya expedition, photo, Vittorio Sella Foundation. 

The Mountain 
The Trango Towers (6,286 m - 20,623 ft) are a family of rock towers situated in Gilgit-Baltistan, in the north of Pakistan. The Towers offer some of the largest cliffs and most challenging rock climbing in the world, and every year a number of expeditions from all corners of the globe visit Karakoram to climb the difficult granite. They are located north of Baltoro Glacier, and are part of the Baltoro Muztagh, a sub-range of the Karakoram range. The highest point in the group is the summit of Great Trango Tower at 6,286 m (20,623 ft), the east face of which features the world's greatest nearly vertical drop.

Full Wikipedia  entry  =>

The photographer

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).

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  and Mustagh Tower in 1909

- In Morocco in 1925.

During expeditions in Alaska, Uganda and Karakoram (K2-Chogolisa), he accompanied the Duke of Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia.

Full Wandering Vertexes entry  =>

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau