KAILASH RANGE BY CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING

CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924)

Kailash  Range / Gangdisê Mountains (6,638 m - 21,778ft) 

China  (Tibet autonomous region) 

In The Khylas peaks and village of Pangi three miles above China on the sutledge, 1869- pencil, watercolor and bodycolor on paper 48.2 x 72.5 cm.

The mountain 

 The Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains), which forms part of the Transhimalaya in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It is the western subrange of the Transhimalaya System. The Nyenchen Tanglha is the eastern subrange.

The highest peak of the Gangdise Shan's peaks, Mount Kailash or Gang Rimpoché (6,638 m - 21,778ft) is a sacred place in four religions : Bön, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.

For Böns, a religion native to Tibet,  it makes no doubt  that the entire mystical region and Kailash, which they call the "nine-story Swastika Mountain", is the axis mundi (Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring).

For Hindus, it is the home of the wild mountain god Shiva and a symbol of his penis.

For Jains it is where their first leader was enlightened.

For Buddhists, the navel of the universe; and for adherents of Bon, the abode of the sky goddess Sipaimen.

The painter 

Constance Frederica “Eka” Gordon-Cumming  was a noted Scottish travel writer and painter. Born in a wealthy family, she travelled around the world and painted described scenes and life as she saw them.

Constance Gordon-Cumming was a prolific landscape painter, mostly in Asia and the Pacific. She painted over a thousand watercolors and worked with a motto to ‘never a day without at least one careful-coloured sketch’ starting her day at 5 am while in India. Places she visited include Australia, New Zealand, America, China, and Japan. 

She arrived in Hilo, Hawaii in October 1879, and was among the first artists to paint the active volcanoes.  Her Hawaii travelogue, Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii, was published in Edinburgh in 1883.  She had several dangerous moments but her travel ended in 1880 when the Montana that she was on ran into rocks at Holyhead. While most of the passengers took the lifeboat, she stayed on last along with the captain to save her paintings and was rescued many hours later. She returned to live at Crieff with her widowed sister Eleanor and continued to write books.

Her best known books are At Home in Fiji and A Lady's Cruise on a French Man-of-War. The latter book resulted from an invitation to join a French ship put into service for the Bishop of Samoa so that he could visit remote parts of his far-flung diocese.

Miss Gordon-Cumming received much criticism from male writers of the era, perhaps because she did not fit in the traditional Victorian role of women, as she often traveled alone and unaided. 

 In any case, her landscape drawings and watercolors seem to be universally admired.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

SHISHAPANGMA / GOSAINTHAN PHOTOGRAPHED BY KURT BOECK

KURT BOECK (1855–1933) 

Shishapangma / Gosainthān  (8,027 m - 26,335 ft) 

China (Autonomous region of Tibet)

 In Das Gosainthangebirge (Shishapangma), Photo, 1898

The mountain 
Shishapangma / Gosainthān  (8,027 m - 26,335 ft)  is the 14th highest mountain in the world. It was the last 8,000 m peak to be climbed, due to its location entirely within Tibet Autonomous Region.  It is the only eight-thousander entirely within Chinese territory, located in south-central Tibet, five kilometres from the border with Nepal.
Shishapangma / Gosainthān was first climbed via the Northern Route on 2 May 1964 by a Chinese expedition led by Xu Jing. In addition to Xǔ Jìng, the summit team consisted of Zhāng Jùnyán, Wang Fuzhou, Wū Zōngyuè, Chén Sān, Soinam Dorjê, Chéng Tiānliàng, Migmar Zhaxi, Dorjê, and Yún Dēng.
Shishapangma / Gosainthān  is also the highest peak in the Jugal Himal which is contiguous with and often considered part of Langtang Himal. The Jugal/Langtang Himal straddles the Tibet/Nepal border.
 Tibetologist Guntram Hazod records a local story that explains the mountain's name in terms of its literal meaning in the Standard Tibetan language: shisha, which means "meat of an animal that died of natural causes" and sbangma which means "malt dregs left over from brewing beer".
According to the story, one year a heavy snowfall killed most of the animals at pasture. All that the people living near the mountain had to eat was the meat of the dead animals and the malt dregs left over from brewing beer, and so the mountain was named Shisha Pangma (shisha sbangma), signifiying "meat of dead animals and malty dregs".
The Sanskrit name of the mountain, Gosainthan, means "place of the saint" or "Abode of God".
Still, its most common name is Shishapangma.

The artist  
Kurt Karl Alexander Oskar Boeck was a German theater actor, climber, travel writer  ans eventually early photographer. He began as an actor but in 1887when  he had the opportunity to accompany a research expedition to Asia, especially to Persia and the Caucasus, he could not resist the temptation.
Researching and traveling in lesser-known, far-off lands told him so much that when he returned home from Asia he did not find a commitment that suited his wishes, he turned completely to this interesting profession. First, Boeck undertook in 1890 at his own expense an expedition to the Himalayas, where he took the glacier leader Hans Kerner from Tyrol and drove in the years 1893, 1895 and 1898-1899 again to India to thoroughly get to know the country in all parts. Boeck's lectures in numerous national and international associations on these and his other travels in Burma, China, America, Japan, Siberia, etc., have made him, as well as his articles in magazines, known to the general public.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

KAILASH / GANG RINPOCHÉ PAINTED BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947)

 Kailash  or Gang Rinpoché  (6,638 m - 21,778ft) 

China  (Tibet autonomous region) 

The mountain 

Mount Kailash (6,638 m - 21,778ft)  also  called Kangrinboqê or Gang Rinpoche  or Tisé Mountain  is situated in  the Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains), which forms part of the Transhimalaya in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.
The mountain is located near Lake Manasarovar and Lake Rakshastal, close to the source of some of the longest Asian rivers: the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, and Karnali also known as Ghaghara (a tributary of the Ganges) in India.
Mount Kailash is considered to be sacred in four religions: Bön, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.
Tibetan Buddhists call it Kangri Rinpoche (Precious Snow Mountain).
For Böns, a religion native to Tibet,  it makes no doubt  that the entire mystical region and Kailash, which they call the "nine-story Swastika Mountain", is the axis mundi (Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring).
For Hindus, it is the home of the wild mountain god Shiva and a symbol of his penis.
For Jains it is where their first leader was enlightened.
For Buddhists, the navel of the universe; and for adherents of Bon, the abode of the sky goddess Sipaimen.
Every year, thousands make a pilgrimage to Kailash, following a tradition going back thousands of years. Pilgrims of several religions believe that circumambulating Mount Kailash on foot is a holy ritual that will bring good fortune. The peregrination is made in a clockwise direction by Hindus and Buddhists, while Jains and Bönpos circumambulate the mountain in a counterclockwise direction.  Kailash is still an unclimbed summit.
Herbert Tichy was in the area in 1936, attempting to climb Gurla Mandhata. When he asked one of the Garpons of Ngari whether Kailash was climbable, the Garpon replied, "Only a man entirely free of sin could climb Kailash. And he wouldn't have to actually scale the sheer walls of ice to do it – he'd just turn himself into a bird and fly to the summit."
 Reinhold Messner was given the opportunity by the Chinese government to climb in the mid-1980s but he declined.
In 2001, reports emerged that the Chinese had given permission for a Spanish team to climb the peak, which caused an international backlash. Chinese authorities disputed the reports, and stated that any climbing activities on Mt Kailash were strictly prohibited.
 Reinhold Messner, who condemned the reported Spanish plans, said:
" If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people's souls. I would suggest they go and climb something a little harder. Kailash is not so high and not so hard. "  

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).
After the October Revolution and the acquisition of power of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, Roerich became increasingly discouraged about Russia's political future. During early 1918, he, Helena, and their two sons George and Sviatoslav emigrated to Finland. After some months in Finland and Scandinavia, the Roerichs relocated to London, arriving in mid-1919. Later, a successful exhibition resulted in an invitation from a director at the Art Institute of Chicago, offering to arrange for Roerich's art to tour the United States. During the autumn of 1920, the Roerichs traveled to America by sea.  The Roerichs remained in the United States from October 1920 until May 1923.
After leaving New York, the Roerichs – together with their son George and six friends – began the five-year-long 'Roerich Asian Expedition' that, in Roerich's own words: "started from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oyrot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet" with a detour through Siberia to Moscow in 1926.
In 1929 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. He received two more nominations in 1932 and 1935. His concern for peace resulted in his creation of the Pax Cultura, the "Red Cross" of art and culture. His work for this cause also resulted in the United States and the twenty other nations of the Pan-American Union signing the Roerich Pact on April 15, 1935 at the White House. The Roerich Pact is an early international instrument protecting cultural property.
In 1934–1935, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (then headed by Roerich admirer Henry A. Wallace) sponsored an expedition by Roerich and USDA scientists H. G. MacMillan and James F. Stephens to Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, and China.
Roerich was in India during the Second World War, where he painted Russian epic heroic and saintly themes, including: Alexander Nevsky, The Fight of Mstislav...
In 1942, Roerich received Jawaharlal Nehru at his house in Kullu. Together they discussed the fate of the new world: "We spoke about Indian-Russian cultural association, it is time to think about useful and creative cooperation ...”.
Gandhi would later recall about several days spent together with Roerich's family: "That was a memorable visit to a surprising and gifted family where each member was a remarkable figure in himself, with a well-defined range of interests." ..."Roerich himself stays in my memory. He was a man with extensive knowledge and enormous experience, a man with a big heart, deeply influenced by all that he observed". During the visit, "ideas and thoughts about closer cooperation between India and USSR were expressed. Now, after India wins independence, they have got its own real implementation[clarification needed]. And as you know, there are friendly and mutually-understanding relationships today between both our countries".
In 1942, the American-Russian cultural Association (ARCA) was created in New York.
Its active participants were Ernest Hemingway, Rockwell Kent, Charlie Chaplin, Emil Cooper, Serge Koussevitzky, and Valeriy Ivanovich Tereshchenko. The Association's activity was welcomed by scientists like Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton.
Roerich died on December 13, 1947.
Presently, the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City is a major institution for Roerich's artistic work. Numerous Roerich societies continue to promote his theosophical teachings worldwide. His paintings can be seen in several museums including the Roerich Department of the State Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow; the Roerich Museum at the International Centre of the Roerichs in Moscow; the Russian State Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; a collection in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; a collection in the Art Museum in Novosibirsk, Russia; an important collection in the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria; a collection in the Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod Russia; National Museum of Serbia ; the Roerich Hall Estate in Nagar village in Kullu Valley, India; the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram, India;[17] in various art museums in India; and a selection featuring several of his larger works in The Latvian National Museum of Art.

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau