LUIS ALFREDO MARTINEZ (1869-1909)
Chimborazo (6,263 m - 20,549 ft)
Ecuador
In Chimborazo desde Occidente, Óleo/lienzo, 98 x 68 cm,
Museo Provincial Casa del Portal, Sucre, Ecuador
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.
Luis Alfredo Martínez Holguín was an Ecuadorian writer, painter and politician, with a marked liberal tendency and a friend of President Eloy Alfaro. Among the public positions he held are deputy to the National Congress for the province of Tungurahua, governor of the same province and undersecretary of the Ministry of Public Instruction. In the literary field, he is considered the initiator of realism in the country. In painting he was one of the few romanticist painters and the first costumbristas who enriched the arts during the first republican decades.
Luis Alfredo Martínez was attracted throughout his life to landscaping. In the prologue of one of his books he wrote: "I do not belong to any school, I am profoundly realistic, and I paint nature as it is and not as conventions teach."
Many of his paintings are outside the country: two of them in the Library of Congress of the United States , two in the Vatican Museum and one in Rio de Janeiro.
Since 1980, the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Ambato holds a painting contest named after Luis Alfredo Martínez, the "Luis A. Martínez Painting Salon".
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
