LE MONT GEIKIE PEINT PAR LAWREN HARRIS

LAWREN HARRIS (1885-1970)
Mont Geikie (3,298 m )
Canada (Colombie Britannique)

In Mountain, Tonquin Valley, Jasper, Huile sur toile, 1924 26.7 x 35.6 cm

 
La montagne
Le mont Geikie (3 298 m))  prononcé comme « geeky » , est un sommet situé dans le parc provincial du mont Robson en Colombie-Britannique, au Canada. Situé à 28 km (17 mi) au sud-ouest de Jasper , près de la vallée de Tonquin, le mont Geikie est le plus haut sommet des Remparts dans les Rocheuses canadiennes, l'une des plus belles chaines de montagnes au monde. Son sommet le plus proche est le mont Frase , à 8,0 km au sud-est, et la ligne de partage des eaux continentales se trouve à 3,0 km à l'est. Le mont Geikie est composé de quartzite de la période cambrienne. Cette roche a été poussée vers l'est et au-dessus d'une roche plus jeune au cours de l' orogenèse du Laramide. La paroi verticale de sa face nord mesure plus de 1 500 mètres  de hauteur et a été comparée aux autres grandes faces nord des Rocheuses canadiennes telles que North Twin, Alberta et Kitchener.
Le mont Geikie a été nommé en 1898 par JE McEvoy de la Commission géologique du Canada en l'honneur du géologue écossais Sir Archibald Geikie (1835-1924), qui fut directeur général de la British Geological Survey de 1882 à 190. La montagne a été étiquetée sur la carte topographique de 1911 d' Arthur O. Wheeler de la région du mont Robson. Le nom de la montagne a été officiellement adopté en 1951 après approbation par la Commission de toponymie du Canada . [
La première ascension du mont Geikie a été réalisée en 1924 par Val Fynn, MD Geddes et Cyril G. Wates via une route sud-ouest.  La première ascension de la face nord a été réalisée en 1967 par John Hudson et Royal Robbins (classe 5.9 ).  D'autres itinéraires sur la face nord incluent le Lowe/Hannibal  classe 5.10b ) en 1979 par George Lowe et Dean Hannibal,  Hesse-Shilling (5.10) par Mark Hesse et Brad Shilling en août 1994, et Honky Tonquin (VI+ 5.10 A3) par Seth Shaw et Scott Simper en juillet 1999.  La première ascension en solo de la face nord a été réalisée en août 2017 par Tony McLane du Canada. La voie d'escalade normale est la Face Sud-Est (IV, 5.5).

Le peintre
Lawren Harris, est un peintre canadien qui a joué un rôle fondamental dans la création du Groupe des sept, ce cercle de jeunes peintres qui allait bouleverser l'art de la peinture au Canada en quelques années.
Après des études à la Central Technical School et au collège St. Andrew, à Toronto, il part étudier à Berlin où il demeurera de 1904 à 1908. Il s'intéresse alors à la philosophie et plus tard à la théosophie.
En 1911, de retour au pays, il se lie d'amitié avec J. E. H. MacDonald. Ensemble, ils fondent le Groupe des sept. Harris devient le théoricien du groupe de par sa formation universitaire. Il défend les idées du poète irlandais George William Russell sur le rôle social de l'artiste. Un local, le Studio Building, procure à ces artistes un endroit pour vivre et travailler. En 1918 et 1919, Harris finance des voyages pour les artistes du groupe dans la région d'Algoma et au lac Supérieur, en Ontario. Séduit par l'endroit, Harris y retourne annuellement durant plusieurs années. Il développe alors le style qui le caractérise le mieux, couleurs vives et riches appliquées en couches épaisses, technique dite impasto. Harris peint également plusieurs paysages de la baie Géorgienne et plus tard des les montagnes Rocheuses.
Lui et plusieurs membres du groupe, dont Alfred Joseph Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson et Franklin Carmichael feront partie du Canadian Group of Painters.
En 1969, il est reçu compagnon de l'Ordre du Canada.
Il meurt à Vancouver en 1970, où il s'était installé en 1940.
Lawren Harris est considéré comme un des peintres importants du Canada. Plusieurs de ses œuvres ont atteint des prix supérieurs aux estimations, comme en 2001 où sa toile Baffin Island, estimée à 1 million de dollars, a été adjugée pour la somme de 2,2 millions de dollars, ou encore Mountain Forms qui fut adjugé à 11,21 millions de dollars lors d'une vente aux enchères. Cette toile tient à ce jour le record de vente pour une tabelau canadien.

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2023 - Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau 

MONT GEIKIE & LES REMPARTS PEINTS PAR LAWREN HARRIS

 

 LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970)

Mont Geikie  - Les Remparts (3,298 m - 10, 820 ft)
Canada (Colombie-Britannique)

 

 In The Ramparts Tonquin Valley, Rocky Mountains huile sur panneau, 27,1x37,5cm, 

Fondation Sobey pour les Arts, Canada 

La montagne 

Le mont Geikie  (3,298 m - 10, 820 ft), prononcé comme " geek ", est un sommet montagneux situé en Colombie-Britannique au Canada. Situé à 28 km au sud-ouest de Jasper près de la vallée de Tonquin, le mont Geikie est le plus haut sommet de la chaine des  Remparts (Ramparts) dans les Rocheuses canadiennes, l'une des plus belles destinations de montagne au monde. Son sommet le plus élevé le plus proche est le mont Fraser à 8 km au sud-est ; le Continental Divide se trouve à 3 km à l'est.  Le mont Geikie est composé de quartzite de la période cambrienne, une  roche poussée vers l'est  au-dessus d'une roche plus jeune au cours de l'orogenèse Laramide.  Le mur vertical de sa face nord mesure plus de 1 500 mètresde haut et a été comparé aux autres grandes faces nord des Rocheuses canadiennes telles que North Twin, Alberta et Kitchener. Les  Remparts se trouvent en partie dans le Parc national de Jasper en Alberta et dans le parc provincial du mont Robson en Colombie-Britannique. 10 sommets font partie de cette chaine, dont le plus élevé est le mont Geikie  La plupart ont été nommés par le Club alpin du Canada et portent des noms sur le thème du génie militaire tels que Bastion, Parapet, Redoute et Dungeon.  Ils forment la limite ouest de la vallée de Tonquin. 

 
Le peintre
Lawren S. Harris  est né à Brantford, en Ontario, en 1885. La famille Harris a fondé l’entreprise de machinerie agricole Massey-Harris (aujourd'hui Massey Ferguson). C'est assez dire que les activités artistiques de Harris ne connaîtront jamais d’obstacle financier !  Dès l’enfance, il commence à dessiner et à peindre à l’aquarelle, puis il se rend à Berlin en 1904 pour y faire des études en arts. Harris devient un adepte de la philosophie théosophique, une interprétation mystique de la doctrine religieuse, qui joua un rôle déterminant dans sa vie et dans son oeuvre. Le style impressionniste de Harris utilise des couleurs riches et vives pour illustrer les thèmes récurrents de la beauté de la nature. Au fil des ans, son style évolue vers l’abstraction. Après avoir parcouru l’Europe et le Moyen-Orient, Harris revient au Canada à l’âge de 22 ans et s’établit à Toronto. Il s’investit activement dans l’Arts and Letters Club de Toronto, où il rencontre les autres membres du futur Groupe des Sept et partage avec eux les philosophies artistiques modernes qu’il rapporte de l’étranger. En 1913, de concert avec le Dr James McCallum, il finance la construction du Studio Building, sur la rue Severn, à Toronto, pour offrir à ces artistes un endroit où ils peuvent vivre et travailler ensemble, afin de créer un nouveau genre d’art canadien. Harris finance aussi de nombreux voyages à Algoma, en Ontario, et est considéré comme responsable de la formation officielle du Groupe des Sept. Il meurt en 1970.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes ....
            Errant au-dessus des Sommets Silencieux...
            Un blog de Francis Rousseau

 

MOUNT COLEMAN PAINTED BY ARTHUR P. COLEMAN

 

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)
Mount Coleman (3,135 m-10,285 ft)
Canada (Alberta) 

 In  "Mountain un the Canadian rockies"

The mountain
Mount Coleman (3,135 m-10,285 ft) mountain summit located in the upper North Saskatchewan River valley in Banff National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada. Its nearest higher peak is Cirrus Mountain, 4.46 km (2.77 mi) to the north.  Mount Coleman is situated along the east side the Icefields Parkway midway between Saskatchewan Crossing and Sunwapta Pass.
Mount Coleman was named in 1898 after Arthur Philemon Coleman (1852-1939), a Canadian geologist and among the first white men to explore the area that is now Jasper National Park.(see below). Like other mountains in Banff Park, Mount Coleman is composed of sedimentary rock laid down from the Precambrian to Jurassic periods. Formed in shallow seas, this sedimentary rock was pushed east and over the top of younger rock during the Laramide orogeny.  Based on the Köppen climate classification, Mount Coleman is located in a subarctic climate with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers.  Temperatures can drop below -20 °C with wind chill factors below -30 °C. Precipitation runoff from Mount Coleman drains into tributaries of the North Saskatchewan River.

The painter
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian a geologist, professor, minerals prospector, artist, Rockies explorer, backwoods canoeist, world traveller, scientist, popular lecturer, museum administrator, memoirist and... one of Canada’s most beloved scientist.
Arthur Coleman is a fine example of that rare bird, a polished amateur artist whose drawings and paintings stand comfortably beside those of many professionals. He was active during the time when sketching and painting was ceding to photography the task of recording the visible world. Although he was also a photographer, painting was, for him, both a poetic and a descriptive pursuit, a way of wrapping an artistic expression around a phenomenon he was interested in or moved by. Thus motivated, Coleman's paintings give much joy and command a good deal of respect. The more surprising, perhaps given that he used to introduced himself more as a geologist than a painter.
Coleman travelled throughout the United States for professional conferences as well as geological field work. He visited many of the major American mountain ranges including: the American Cordillera Mountains (Washington, Oregon and California); the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California and Nevada); Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho); and the Appalachian Mountains (eastern United States). Pleistocene glaciation had extended in Northern Europe as far south as Berlin and London and covered an area of two million square miles. Coleman also visited such countries as India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Scandinavia, Bolivia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In his final years he made two expeditions to the Andes in Colombia, to mountains in Southern Mexico and to two mountains in Central America. He achieved the first ascent of Castle Mountain in 1884, and in 1907, he was the first white man to attempt to climb Mount Robson. He made a total of eight exploratory trips to the Canadian Rockies, wholly four of them looking for the mythical giants of Hooker and Brown.
From 1901 to 1922, he was a Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1919 to 1922. From 1931 to 1934, he was a geologist with the Department of Mines of the Government of Ontario. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1900 and was its President in 1921. In 1929, he was appointed Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
"Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park is named in his honor. He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.
He planned to climb "his" mountain, "Mount Coleman"'in the Albertan Rockies, and had also prepared a trip to British Guiana, but death intervened.
He was author of:
- Reports on the Economic Geology of Ontario (1903)
- Lake Ojibway; Last of the Great Glacial Lakes (1909)
- The Canadian Rockies: New and Old Trails (1911)
- Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient (1926), and was co-author of Elementary Geology (1922).
- The Last Million Years (1941) edited by George F. Kay

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT NIBLOCK, MOUNT TEMPLE, MOUNT WHYTE BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

 

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)
Mount Niblock (2,976 m - 9,764 ft)
Mount Temple (3,544 m -11,627 ft) 
Mount Whyte (2,983 m -9,787 ft) 
Canada ( Alberta)

In Canadian Rockies (Lake Louise), ca. 1889, oil on paper mounted to board, 37.5 x 53.3cm, The MET, not on view 

About the painting
During his travels in the American and Canadian West, Bierstadt made oil sketches such as this one, which he used, back in his New York studio, for reference in concocting the huge, carefully detailed panoramic scenes that brought him critical acclaim during the 1860s and 1870s. By the end of the century, American viewers had come to appreciate the more modest landscape observations of Barbizon and Impressionist painters, and Bierstadt’s sketches were themselves valued as fresh, direct records of the places he had visited.
Extract of the Notice of the MET museum

The mountains 
Mount Niblock (2,976 m (9,764 ft) (first on left in the painting  above)  is a mountain in Banff National Park near Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. The mountain was named in 1904 after John Niblock, a superintendent with the Canadian Pacific Railway. Niblock was an early promoter of tourism in the Rockies and influenced the naming of some of the CPR stops in Western Canada.
Mount Temple (3,544 m - 11,627 ft)  (in the middle of the painting above) is located in the Bow River Valley between Paradise Creek and Moraine Creek and is the highest peak in the Lake Louisea rea. The peak dominates the western landscape along the Trans-Canada Highway from Castle Junction to Lake Louise. The mountain was named by George Mercer Dawson in 1884 after Sir Richard Temple who visited the Canadian Rockies that same year. Mt. Temple was the first 11,000-foot (3,400 m) peak to be climbed in the Canadian segment of the Rocky Mountains. First Ascent of a peak above 11,000 feet (3,353 m) in the Canadian Rockieso was made  August 17, 1894 by Walter D. Wilcox, Samuel E. S. Allen and Lewis Frissell .
Mount Whyte (2,983 m -9,787 ft)  (at the background of the painting above) is a mountain in Alberta, Canada located in Banff National Park, near Lake Louise. The mountain can be seen from the Trans-Canada Highway, and offers views of the Valley of the Ten Peaks, including the Chateau Lake Louise. The mountain was named in 1898 by Sir William Methuen after William Whyte, a representative of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mount.Whyte is usually combined with  Mount Niblock when done as a scramble. However, while Mt. Niblock is rated a moderate scramble, Mt. Whyte is much more difficult due to additional exposure and loose rock. The scramble should not be attempted in snowy conditions due to considerable fall distance which would likely prove fatal.

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.
Full Wandering Vertextes entry =>__

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT ROBSON BY ARTHUR P. COLEMAN

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)
Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) 

Canada (British Columbia)

  In Mount Robson glacier -cutting steps, oil on canvas

The mountain 

Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) is the most prominent mountain in North America's Rocky Mountain range; it is also the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. The mountain is located entirely within Mount Robson Provincial Park of British Columbia, and is part of the Rainbow Range. Mount Robson is the second highest peak entirely in British Columbia, behind Mount Waddington in the Coast Range. The south face of Mount Robson is clearly visible from the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16), and is commonly photographed along this route.

Mount Robson was likely named after Colin Robertson, who worked for both the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company at various times in the early 19th century, though there was confusion over the name as many assumed it to have been named for John Robson, an early premier of British Columbia. The Texqakallt, a Secwepemc people and the earliest inhabitants of the area, call it Yuh-hai-has-kun (The Mountain of the Spiral Road). Other unofficial names include Cloud Cap Mountain.

In 1893, five years after the expedition of A.P. Coleman to Athabasca Pass and the final settling of the mistaken elevations of Mt. Hooker and Mt. Brown, Mt. Robson was first surveyed by James McEvoy and determined to be the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. The first documented ascent of Mount Robson, led by the young guide Conrad Kain, at its time the hardest ice face to be climbed on the continent, was achieved during the 1913 annual expedition organized by a large party of Alpine Club of Canada members who made use of the newly completed Grand Trunk Pacific railway to access the area. Prior to 1913, it had been necessary to approach the mountain by pack train from Edmonton or Laggan via Jasper and Lucerne, so only few intrepid explorers had made previous attempts at exploring the mountain. The most famous early ascensionist was the Reverend George Kinney, a founding member of the Alpine Club, who on his twelfth attempt in August 1909 claimed to have reached the summit with local outfitter Donald "Curly" Phillips. A major controversy over this claim and over the implausible nature of his unlikely and dangerous route dominated the discourse within the Alpine Club elite, and he is now generally presumed to have reached the high summit ridge before being turned back at the final ice dome of the peak. Kinney Lake, below the south face, is named in his honour.

The north face of Mount Robson is heavily glaciated and 800 m (2,600 ft) of ice extends from the summit to Berg Glacier. The Berg glacier calves directly into the lake. The Robson Glacier, which fills the cirque and valley between Mount Robson and Mount Resplendent, in the early 1900s fed directly into both Berg lake and Adolphus lake, straddling the Continental Divide and draining thus to both the Arctic and Pacific oceans via the Smoky and Robson Rivers, respectively. It since has receded more than 2 kilometres and is the source of the Robson River only.

The painter 
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian a geologist, professor, minerals prospector, artist, Rockies explorer, backwoods canoeist, world traveller, scientist, popular lecturer, museum administrator, memoirist and...  one of Canada’s most beloved scientist.
Arthur Coleman is a fine example of that rare bird, a polished amateur artist whose drawings and paintings stand comfortably beside those of many professionals. He was active during the time when sketching and painting was ceding to photography the task of recording the visible world. Although he was also a photographer, painting was, for him, both a poetic and a descriptive pursuit, a way of wrapping an artistic expression around a phenomenon he was interested in or moved by. Thus motivated, Coleman's paintings give much joy and command a good deal of respect. The more surprising, perhaps given that he used to introduced himself more as a geologist than a painter.
Coleman travelled throughout the United States for professional conferences as well as geological field work.  He visited many of the major American mountain ranges including: the American Cordillera Mountains (Washington, Oregon and California); the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California and Nevada); Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho); and the Appalachian Mountains (eastern United States). Pleistocene glaciation had extended in Northern Europe as far south as Berlin and London and covered an area of two million square miles. Coleman also visited such countries as India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Scandinavia, Bolivia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In his final years he made two expeditions to the Andes in Colombia, to mountains in Southern Mexico and to two mountains in Central America.  He achieved the first ascent of Castle Mountain in 1884, and in 1907, he was the first white man to attempt to climb Mount Robson. He made a total of eight exploratory trips to the Canadian Rockies, wholly four of them looking for the mythical giants of Hooker and Brown.
 "Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park are named in his honor.
He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT RUNDLE BY WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS

WALTER JOSEPH  PHILLIPS (1884 -1963) 

Mount Rundle  (2,949 m - 9,675 ft) 

Canada (Alberta) 

 In Mount Rundle as seen from Vermilion Lakes, watercolour on paper,  1945, 33 x 54.6 cm, 

Glenbow Museum, Calgary 

About this painting 

Painter, print-maker and art teacher, Walter Phillips described Mount Rundle as his, " bread and butter mountain. I never tire of painting it, for it is never the same. In deep shadow in the morning, it borrows a warm glow from the setting sun at the end of the day. Its colour runs the gamut from orange to cold blue-grey, with overtones of violet and intervals of green."

The mountain
Mount Rundle  (2,949 m - 9,675 feet) is a mountain in Canada's Banff National Park overlooking the towns of Banff and Canmore, Alberta. The Cree name was Waskahigan Watchi or House Mountain. In 1858 John Palliser renamed the mountain after Reverend Robert Rundle, a Methodist invited by the Hudson's Bay Company to do missionary work in western Canada in the 1840s. He introduced syllabics there a written language developed for the Cree, as part of his missionary work. He only visited the Stoney-Nakoda of the area around what is now called Mount Rundle in 1844 and 1847.
Mt. Rundle could actually be considered a small mountain range as the mountain extends for over 12 kilometres (7.5 mi), on the south side of the Trans-Canada Highway eastward from Banff to Canmore with seven distinct peaks along the way. The Rundle Peaks are part of the South Banff Ranges, along with its siblings—the Sundance Range, Sulphur Mountain and the Goat Range.
Rundle rock or Rundle stone, a natural stone, first quarried on Mount Rundle, is a common dimension stone used in southern Alberta for landscaping and building purposes. It has been used in the construction of the Banff Springs Hotel and several of the Parks Canada buildings. It is fine-grained sandstone dating back to the Triassic Period.

The painter
Walter Joseph Phillips was an English-born Canadian painter and printmaker. He is credited with popularizing the colour woodcut in the style of the Japanese, in Canada.
Phillips is famous for his woodcuts and watercolour sketches. His artistic career spanned from the 1900s through the 1940s, during which time his work was exhibited throughout North America and Great Britain. Common subjects for Phillips included the lakes of Manitoba—York Boat on Lake Winnipeg (1930) is a well-known print—the prairies, and in his later years, the Rocky Mountains, where his ashes were scattered.
In 1940 he was asked to become a resident artist at the Banff Centre, then known as the Banff School of Fine Arts, where he played an important role in the development of their visual arts program.

Its Walter Phillips Gallery, which focuses on contemporary art, is named after him. The Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta holds an extensive collection of Phillips works and a research archive
He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
On 17 February 1997 Canada Post issued 'York Boat on Lake Winnipeg, 1930, Walter J. Phillips' in the Masterpieces of Canadian art series. The stamp was designed by Pierre-Yves Pelletier based on a woodcut "York Boat on Lake Winnipeg" (1930) by Walter Joseph Phillips in the National Gallery of Canada. The 90¢ stamps were printed by Ashton-Potter Canada Limited.

 On May 26, 2010, Phillips' print "Summer Idyll" reached US$30,109 at auction by Heffel Fine Art.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MALIGNE MOUNTAIN BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970)

Maligne Mountain  (3,200m -10,500-ft)  

Canada (Alberta)

 In Mountains East of Maligne Lake, Maligne Mountain,  oil on canvas, 1925

The mountain 
Maligne Mountain  (3,200m -10,500-ft)  is multi-peak massif located east of Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada. Maligne Mountain is surrounded by glaciers, and its nearest higher peak is Monkhead, 7.83 kilometres (4.87 miles) to the south.
The peak was first named by Mary Schäffer in 1911 because she thought one peak should bear the name of Maligne Lake. Mary "discovered" Maligne Lake and she named many of the mountains around it, including Mount Charlton, Mount Unwin, and Mount Warren. The mountain's name was officially adopted in 1946 by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.
The first ascent of Maligne Mountain was made in 1930 by W.R. Hainsworth, J.F. Lehmann, M.M. Strumia, and N.D. Waffl.
Based on the Köppen climate classification, Maligne Mountain is located in a subarctic climate with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers.Temperatures can drop below −20 degrees Celsius (−4 degrees Fahrenheit) with wind chill factors below −30 °C (−22 °F).

The painter 

Lawren Stewart Harris  was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.

In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)

In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT BURGESS & EMERALD LAKE BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874-1965), 

Mount Burgess (2,599 m - 8,527 ft)

Canada

In  Emerald Lake, Canada, oil on canvas, Private owner 

The Mountain 

Mount Burgess (2,599 m - 8,527 ft) is a mountain in Yoho National Park and is part of the Canadian Rockies. It is located in the southwest buttress of Burgess Pass in the Emerald River and Kicking Horse River Valleys.  It was named in 1886 by Otto Koltz after Alexander MacKinnon Burgess, the Deputy Minister of the Interior at the time.

In 1892, James J. McArthur was the first to ascend this mountain. He was completing a survey of the lands adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1909, geologist Charles D. Walcott discovered the Burgess Shale deposit of fossils with fine details on Mount Burgess. The Burgess Shale is a black shale fossil bed (Lagerstätte) named after nearby Burgess Pass, in which are found new and unique species, many in fact constituting entire new phyla of life, and even today some of these unique species have proven impossible to classify. The fossils are especially valuable because they include appendages and soft parts that are rarely preserved.

The mountain has two summits. The lower north summit was named Walcott Peak in his honour.

Between 1954 and 1971, Mount Burgess was featured on the back of the Canadian ten-dollar bill. It is still informally called the "Ten Dollar Mountain" as a result.

In 1984, UNESCO declared the area a World Heritage Site.

The painter
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was 40 before he discovered the pleasures of painting. The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose. He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace. Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures. His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy. He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees. To him it was the greatest of hobbies. He had found his other world -- a respite from crowding events and pulsating politics....
Full Wandering vertexes entry  =>

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT LEFROY BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970),

Mount Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft) 

 Canada (Alberta)

 1. In Snow Rocky Mountain Paintings VII, oil on canvas,1929, Thomson Col.

2.  In Mount Lefroy oil on canvas, 1929,  National Gallery of Canada 

The mountain 

Mont Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft)  is a mountain on the Continental Divide, at the border of Alberta and British Columbia in western Canada. The mountain is located on the eastern side of Abbot Pass which separates Lake Louise in Banff National Park from Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park. Mount Victoria lies immediately on the western side of the pass.

The mountain was named by George M. Dawson in 1894 for Sir John Henry Lefroy (1817-1890), an astronomer who had traveled over 8,800 kilometres (5,470 mi) in Canada's north between 1842-44 making meteorological and magnetic observations.

The mountain is the site of the first fatal climbing accident in Canada. In 1896 during a failed summit bid, Philip Stanley Abbot slipped on rocks after just coming off an icy section and plummeted down the rock face to his death.

A prominent painting by Canadian Group of 7 artist Lawren Harris, was painted at this site. It is the second one in this page. 

The painter 
Lawren Stewart Harris  was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT ASSINIBOINE BY HENRY JOSEPH BREUER

HENRY JOSEPH BREUER  (1860-1932) 

Mount Assiniboine (3,618m - 11,870ft) 

Canada (Alberta)

The mountain
Mount Assiniboine (3,618m - 11,870ft) also known as Assiniboine Mountain, is a pyramidal peak mountain located on the Great Divide, on the British Columbia/Alberta border in Canada.
It is the highest peak in the Southern Continental Ranges of the Canadian Rockies. Mt. Assiniboine rises nearly 1,525 m (5,003 ft) above Lake Magog. Because of its resemblance to the Matterhorn in the Alps, it is nicknamed the "Matterhorn of the Rockies". Mt. Assiniboine was named by George M. Dawson in 1885. When Dawson saw Mt. Assiniboine from Copper Mountain, he saw a plume of clouds trailing away from the top. This reminded him of the plumes of smoke emanating from the teepees of Assiniboine Indians. Mt. Assiniboine lies on the border between Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park, in British Columbia, and Banff National Park, in Alberta. The park does not have any roads and thus can only be reached by a six-hour hike 27 km (17 mi), three-hour bike ride (now disallowed to reduce human / grizzly encounters) or helicopter. The usual approach is via Bryant Creek. From Canmore follow the Smith-Dorien road to the Mount Shark parking lot. The trail is well signed. A helipad is also here.
Mt. Assiniboine was first climbed in 1901 by James Outram, Christian Bohren and Christian Hasler. In 1925, Lawrence Grassi became the first person to make a solo ascent. On August 27, 2001, Bohren's granddaughter Lonnie along with three others made a successful ascent, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first ascent.

The painter 
Not to be  confused with the austrian physician, Joseph Breuer, Henry-Joseph Breuer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,  in 1860, is a american painter who earned a reputation as a well-known "painter of poetic landscapes."  He studied art during the 1870s in Buffalo, New York, and then worked as a designer-decorator for the Rockwood Pottery Company in Cincinnati where he also attended the Art Academy. He worked for five years as a lithographer in New York City. 

In 1888, he settled in San Francisco where he became art editor for the San Francisco Chronicle and Californian magazine. Then he went to France for art study and was influenced by the Barbizon School of impressionist painters of rural landscapes. 

Living out of a horse-drawn wagon, he traveled extensively along the western coast of California and Oregon, painting and earning a national reputation for his landscapes. He also painted in Arizona including Canyon de Chelly in Navajo country and did commissioned views of the San Gabriel Valley for the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.

In 1903 he spent two weeks in  Mount Shasta which had a great impact on him. In the Cincinatti  Time Stars he wrote:  " I board a train to some station somewhere near Mount Shasta,and this into the woods. I man a one- man camp every night for two weeks.  It was cold and sometimes miserable in the thick, wet, cold mist of the mountain side, but the days were grand before that high, white altar, Shasta! I shall feel for all my life that I was a true pilgrim, and for the sake of days like that, I am happy to be what I am, a landscape painter..."

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

RINGROSE PEAK BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT  (1882 – 1971) 

Ringrose Peak  (3,292 m - 10,801 ft) 
Canada (Alberta- British Columbia)

In Canadian rockies, oil on canvas 

The mountain 

Ringrose Peak  (3,292 m - 10,801 ft)  is a mountain on the Alberta- British Columbia border, in Canada. It is located on the Continental Divide on the border of Banff and Yoho National Parks and is part of the Bow Range of the Banff-Lake Louise Core Area in the Canadian Rockies.

The peak was named in 1894 after A.E.L. Ringrose by Samuel Allen, because previously Allen had met Ringrose, while Allen was visiting the Rockies. Ringrose was visiting from London, England.

The painter

Rockwell Kent, artist, author, and political activist, had a long  and varied career. During his lifetime, he worked as an architectural draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, painter, lobsterman, ship's carpenter, and dairy farmer. Born in Tarrytown Heights, New York, he lived in Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and the Adirondacks and explored the waters around Tierra del Fuego in a small boat. Kent's paintings, lithographs, and woodcuts often portrayed the bleak and rugged aspects of nature; a reflection of his life in harsh climates.His experience as a carpenter and builder and his familiarity with tools served him well when he took up the graphic process. His blocks were marvels of beautiful cutting, every line deliberate and under perfect control. The tones and lines in his lithography were solidly built up, subtle, and full of color. He usually made preliminary studies- old-mater style- for composition or detail before starting on a print. Nothing was vague or accidental about his work; his expression was clear and deliberate. Neither misty tonalities nor suggestiveness were to his taste. He was a highly objectified art - clean, athletic, sometimes almost austere and cold. He either recorded adventures concretely, or dealt in ideas. His studio was a model of the efficient workshop: neat, orderly, with everything in its place. His handwriting, the fruit of his architectural training, was beautiful and precise.
When Kent died of a heart attack in 1971, The New York Times described him as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States."  Richer, more accurate accounts of the scope of the artist's influential career as a painter and writer have since superseded this cursory summing-up of an American life. Retrospectives of the artist's paintings and drawings have been mounted, most recently by The Rooms in St. John's, Newfoundland, where the exhibition Pointed North: Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland and Labrador was curated by Caroline Stone in the summer of 2014. Other recent exhibitions include the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) in the autumn of 2012; the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) during the spring through autumn of 2012; the Bennington Museum in Vermont during the summer of 2012; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring through summer of 2012. An exhibition marking the centennial of Kent's time in Winona, Minnesota, took place there in 2013. Among the many notes of increasing awareness of Kent's contributions to American culture is the reproduction of one of Kent's pen-and-ink drawings from Moby Dick on a U.S. postage stamp, part of the 2001 commemorative panel celebrating such American illustrators as Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington, and Norman Rockwell.

MOUNT SCHAFFER PAINTED BY LAWREN HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970)

Mount Schaffer (2,962 m - 9,711 ft)

 Canada

In Mount Schaffer, Yoho national park, oil on canvas, 1926

The mountain 
Mount Schaffer (2,962 m- 9,711ft) was named in 1909 after Mary Schaffer.
Schaffer, a native of Pennsylvania, accompanied the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences on a trip to the Canadian Rockies with Mary Vaux in 1889. The Rockies made an obvious impression on Mary, who was an accomplished artist, writer and photographer and she returned annually to explore until finally moving to Banff in 1912. Although Mount Schaffer overlooks one of Yoho National Park’s scenic gems: Lake O’Hara, Mary Schaffer is more well-known for her exploration of Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park. In addition to being the first tourist in Jasper National Park, in 1908, she was likely the first non-native person to see Maligne Lake since it was discovered 32 years earlier. Mount Schaffer was first climbed in 1909 by M. Goddard and W. S. Richardson.

The painter 
Lawren Stewart Harris was a leading landscape canadian painter. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."
(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
For Harris, art was to express spiritual values as well as to represent the visible world. North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), an image of a solitary weathered tree stump surrounded by an expanse of dramatically lit sky, effectively evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.
The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. Several members of the Group of Seven later became members of the Canadian Group of Painters including Harris, A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.
From 1934 to 1937, Harris lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he painted his first abstract works, a direction he would continue for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and helped found the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of artists who advocated a spiritual form of abstraction.
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist. He was buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where his work is now held.
On November 26, 2015 his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works.
In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.

THE RAMPARTS PAINTED BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

 LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970)

Dungeon Peak - The Ramparts (3, 219 m - 10, 266 ft)  

Canada

 In The Ramparts Tonquin Valley, oil on canvas,  no dating

The mountain 

Dungeon Peak (3, 219 m - 10, 266 ft) is located on the border of Alberta and British Columbia. Named in 1916, Dungeon peak is one of the 10 named peaks by the Alpine Club of Canada part of The Ramparts, such as Bastion, Parapet etc.. They form a western boundary for the Tonquin Valley. Amethyst Lake lies to the east, while the headwaters of the Fraser River bound it to the west.

The Ramparts are a mountain range in the Canadian Rockies; part of the Park Ranges, they straddle the Continental Divide and lie partly within Jasper National Park in Alberta and Mount Robson Provincial Park in British Columbia.

The first ascent of Dungeon peak was made  in 1933 by  Rex Gibson, R.C. Hind, E.L. Woolf

The most famous cliimbing route is East Face IV 5.7, another of the prominent east-facing rib routes. Not quite as aesthetic as the E Face of Oubliette (2 days climbing route) but still a very worthwhile outing. Mostly a rock route but take ice gear for both the ascent and descent.


The painter 
Lawren Stewart Harris was a leading landscape canadian painter. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."
(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
For Harris, art was to express spiritual values as well as to represent the visible world. North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), an image of a solitary weathered tree stump surrounded by an expanse of dramatically lit sky, effectively evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.
The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. Several members of the Group of Seven later became members of the Canadian Group of Painters including Harris, A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.
From 1934 to 1937, Harris lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he painted his first abstract works, a direction he would continue for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and helped found the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of artists who advocated a spiritual form of abstraction.
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist. He was buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where his work is now held.
On November 26, 2015 his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works.
In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.

MOUNT BRAZEAU BY ARTHUR. P. COLEMAN

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)

Mount Brazeau (3, 500 m - 11, 483 ft) 

Canada (Alberta) 

 In The Brazeau from camp 17, 1892 watercolor 

The mountain 

Mount Brazeau  (3, 470m - 11, 380ft)  is a mountain in  Canada (Alberta),  located in the upper Coronet Creek Valley of Jasper National Park. It stands west of the Coronet Glacier and south of Maligne Lake. The mountain was named in 1902 by Arthur P. Coleman (who painted the mountain as well) after Joseph Edward Brazeau, who had provided his translation skills to the Palliser Expedition. The name Brazeau was originally applied to the Brazeau River by Sir James Hector ( the most important members of the Palliser Expedition, becoming the first to travel through much of the Canadian Rockies.) 

Mount Brazeau is an impressive mountain with several striking and formidable faces falling down to Maligne Lake and Coronet Creek in southern Jasper National Park. The West Face is massive and near vertical, rising nearly 1,000 metres (3,280 ft.) from Coronet Creek to the summit plateau, which is draped in the glacial mass of the Brazeau Icefield. The south and southwest slopes, topped with the Brazeau Icefield, are low angle and gentle, but are riddled with a minefield of hidden crevasses. 

Mount Brazeau is high on the list of Canadian Rockies 11,000 footers, depending on your perspective, either the thirteenth, seventeenth or twenty first highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies; 21 th on the generally accepted list of 54 summits. 

Jasper National Park  (11,228 square kilometres -4,335 square miles) is the largest of Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The painter 
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian a geologist, professor, minerals prospector, artist, Rockies explorer, backwoods canoeist, world traveller, scientist, popular lecturer, museum administrator, memoirist and...  one of Canada’s most beloved scientist.
Arthur Coleman is a fine example of that rare bird, a polished amateur artist whose drawings and paintings stand comfortably beside those of many professionals. He was active during the time when sketching and painting was ceding to photography the task of recording the visible world. Although he was also a photographer, painting was, for him, both a poetic and a descriptive pursuit, a way of wrapping an artistic expression around a phenomenon he was interested in or moved by. Thus motivated, Coleman's paintings give much joy and command a good deal of respect. The more surprising, perhaps given that he used to introduced himself more as a geologist than a painter.
Coleman travelled throughout the United States for professional conferences as well as geological field work.  He visited many of the major American mountain ranges including: the American Cordillera Mountains (Washington, Oregon and California); the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California and Nevada); Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho); and the Appalachian Mountains (eastern United States). Pleistocene glaciation had extended in Northern Europe as far south as Berlin and London and covered an area of two million square miles. Coleman also visited such countries as India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Scandinavia, Bolivia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In his final years he made two expeditions to the Andes in Colombia, to mountains in Southern Mexico and to two mountains in Central America.  He achieved the first ascent of Castle Mountain in 1884, and in 1907, he was the first white man to attempt to climb Mount Robson. He made a total of eight exploratory trips to the Canadian Rockies, wholly four of them looking for the mythical giants of Hooker and Brown.
From 1901 to 1922, he was a Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1919 to 1922. From 1931 to 1934, he was a geologist with the Department of Mines of the Government of Ontario. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1900 and was its President in 1921. In 1929, he was appointed Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
 "Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park is named in his honor.  He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.
He planned to climb "hi" mountain, "Mount Coleman"'in the Albertan Rockies, and had also prepared a trip to British Guiana, but death intervened.
He was author of:
- Reports on the Economic Geology of Ontario (1903)
- Lake Ojibway; Last of the Great Glacial Lakes (1909)
- The Canadian Rockies: New and Old Trails (1911)
- Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient (1926), and was co-author of Elementary Geology (1922).
- The Last Million Years (1941) edited by George F. Kay

MOUNT ROBSON BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970) 

Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) 

Canada  (British Columbia)

The Mountain 

Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) is the most prominent mountain in North America's Rocky Mountain range; it is also the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. The mountain is located entirely within Mount Robson Provincial Park of British Columbia, and is part of the Rainbow Range. Mount Robson is the second highest peak entirely in British Columbia, behind Mount Waddington in the Coast Range. The south face of Mount Robson is clearly visible from the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16), and is commonly photographed along this route.

Mount Robson was likely named after Colin Robertson, who worked for both the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company at various times in the early 19th century, though there was confusion over the name as many assumed it to have been named for John Robson, an early premier of British Columbia. The Texqakallt, a Secwepemc people and the earliest inhabitants of the area, call it Yuh-hai-has-kun (The Mountain of the Spiral Road). Other unofficial names include Cloud Cap Mountain.

In 1893, five years after the expedition of A.P. Coleman to Athabasca Pass and the final settling of the mistaken elevations of Mt. Hooker and Mt. Brown, Mt. Robson was first surveyed by James McEvoy and determined to be the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies.  The first documented ascent of Mount Robson, led by the young guide Conrad Kain, at its time the hardest ice face to be climbed on the continent, was achieved during the 1913 annual expedition organized by a large party of Alpine Club of Canada members who made use of the newly completed Grand Trunk Pacific railway to access the area. Prior to 1913, it had been necessary to approach the mountain by pack train from Edmonton or Laggan via Jasper and Lucerne, so only few intrepid explorers had made previous attempts at exploring the mountain. The most famous early ascensionist was the Reverend George Kinney, a founding member of the Alpine Club, who on his twelfth attempt in August 1909 claimed to have reached the summit with local outfitter Donald "Curly" Phillips. A major controversy over this claim and over the implausible nature of his unlikely and dangerous route dominated the discourse within the Alpine Club elite, and he is now generally presumed to have reached the high summit ridge before being turned back at the final ice dome of the peak. Kinney Lake, below the south face, is named in his honour.

The north face of Mount Robson is heavily glaciated and 800 m (2,600 ft) of ice extends from the summit to Berg Glacier.  The Berg glacier calves directly into the lake. The Robson Glacier, which fills the cirque and valley between Mount Robson and Mount Resplendent, in the early 1900s fed directly into both Berg lake and Adolphus lake, straddling the Continental Divide and draining thus to both the Arctic and Pacific oceans via the Smoky and Robson Rivers, respectively. It since has receded more than 2 kilometres and is the source of the Robson River only.

The painter 

Lawren Stewart Harris, (1885–1970) was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.

In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)

For Harris, art was to express spiritual values as well as to represent the visible world. North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), an image of a solitary weathered tree stump surrounded by an expanse of dramatically lit sky, effectively evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.

The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. Several members of the Group of Seven later became members of the Canadian Group of Painters including Harris, A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.

From 1934 to 1937, Harris lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he painted his first abstract works, a direction he would continue for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and helped found the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of artists who advocated a spiritual form of abstraction.

In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist. He was buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where his work is now held.

On November 26, 2015 his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works.

In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.

CASTLE MOUNTAIN IN VINTAGE POSTCARD 1947

VINTAGE POSTCARD  1947

Castle Mountain or  Mount Eisenhower   (2,766m - 9,075ft)

Canada

 In Castle Mountain in Banff National Park, 1947, Hand-tinted photograph  

The mountain 

Castle Mountain (2,766m - 9,075ft) also named Mount Eisenhower between 1946 and 1979, is a mountain located within Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, approximately halfway between Banff and Lake Louise. It is the easternmost mountain of the Main Ranges in the Bow Valley and sits astride the Castle Mountain Fault which has thrust older sedimentary and metamorphic rocks forming the upper part of the mountain over the younger rocks forming its base. The mountain's castellated, or castle-like, appearance is a result of erosive processes acting at different rates on the peak's alternating layers of softer shale and harder limestone, dolomite and quartzite.
The mountain was named in 1858 by James Hector for its castle-like appearance. From 1946 to 1979 it was known as Mount Eisenhower in honour of the World War II general Dwight D. Eisenhower. Public pressure caused its original name to be restored, but a pinnacle on the southeastern side of the mountain was named Eisenhower Tower. Located nearby are the remains of Silver City, a 19th-century mining settlement, and the Castle Mountain Internment Camp in which persons deemed enemy aliens and suspected enemy sympathizers were confined during World War I.
While looking nearly inaccesible from the Trans-Canada Highway, the peak can be ascended from the backside on the northeastern slopes. The trail to Rockbound Lake leads hikers around the eastern side. The massif contains several high points including Helena Ridge (2,862 m - 9,390 ft), Stuart Knob (2,850 m - 9,350 ft) and Television Peak (2,970 m - 9,744 ft), the latter being named for the TV repeater located on top. Technicians use a helicopter rather than hiking the long ascent to the top.
James Hector, who accompanied the Palliser Expedition, encountered Castle Mountain in August 1858 while leading a side expedition to find the headwaters of the Bow River. He noted that it "...looks exactly like a gigantic castle" and named it Castle Mountain.  He also made the first recorded ascent of its slopes, but is not believed to have reached its summit.
The first climber to reach the top of Castle Mountain was Arthur P. Coleman, a professor at the University of Toronto, in 1884. Lawrence Grassi and P. Cerutti, both from Canmore, were the first to climb Eisenhower Tower in 1926.
In 1881, Joe Healy received some ore in trade from a First Nations person which was discovered to contain a relatively high silver content. The following year he settled at Castle Mountain as a prospector. News of Healy's ore soon spread; others began to arrive and the settlement of Silver City, situated near Castle Mountain, quickly developed. It was already thriving when the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railroad was built through the area in 1884.  Over three thousand people lived there at its height, but it was almost entirely abandoned in 1885 because the mines failed to yield a significant profit.
Situated nearby is Castle Mountain Internment Camp, a First World War internment camp where Ukrainian immigrants to Canada were confined. Life in the camps was often described as 'grim'; with its isolated location far from the roads of the time, the Castle Mountain camp was an ideal place to confine 'enemy aliens' and 'suspected enemy sympathisers'. The forced labour of these men helped build much of the infrastructure of Banff National Park. Internees were held at the Cave & Basin site during the winter months.
Construction began in 1910 at Castle Junction on a highway connecting British Columbia to Calgary that would, upon its completion in the early 1920s, make Castle Mountain more accessible to climbers, hikers and other tourists.


Vintage postcards
Postcards became popular at the turn of the 20th century, especially for sending short messages to friends and relatives. They were collected right from the start, and are still sought after today by collectors of pop culture, photography, advertising, wartime memorabilia, local history, and many other categories.
Postcards were an international craze, published all over the world. The Detroit Publishing Co. and Teich & Co. were two of the major publishers in the U.S, and sometimes individuals printed their own postcards as well. Yvon were the most famous in France. Many individual or anonymous publishers did exist around the world and especially in Africa and  Asia (Japan, Thailand, Nepal, China, Java) between 1920 and 1955. These photographer were mostly local notables, soldiers, official guides belonging to the colonial armies (british french, belgium...) who sometimes had rather sophisticated equipment and readily produced colored photograms or explorers, navigators, climbers (Vittorio Sella and the Archiduke of Abruzzi future king of Italy remains the most famous of them).
There are many types of collectible vintage postcards.
Hold-to-light postcards were made with tissue paper surrounded by two pieces of regular paper, so light would shine through. Fold-out postcards, popular in the 1950s, had multiple postcards attached in a long strip. Real photograph postcards (RPPCs) are photographs with a postcard backing.
Novelty postcards were made using wood, aluminum, copper, and cork. Silk postcards–often embroidered over a printed image–were wrapped around cardboard and sent in see-through glassine paper envelopes; they were especially popular during World War I.
In the 1930s and 1940s, postcards were printed on brightly colored paper designed to look like linen.
Most vintage postcard collectors focus on themes, like Christmas, Halloween, portraits of movie stars, European royalty and U.S. presidents, wartime imagery, and photos of natural disasters or natural wonders. Not to mention cards featuring colorful pictures by famous artists like Alphonse Mucha, Harrison Fisher, Ellen Clapsaddle, and Frances Brundage.

ESPLANADE RANGE PAINTED BY LAWREN HARRIS

LAWREN HARRIS (1885-1970)
Esplanade Range   (2,301 m - 7,549 ft)

Canada

In Athabaska at Jasper, oil on canvas, 1924
 

The mountains
Esplanade Range includes, from right to left, in the painting above :  Gargoyle mountain, Esplanade mountain, Chetamin, The Palisades. 
Esplanade Mountain (2,301 m - 7,549 ft)  is a mountain summit located in Jasper National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada. The peak is situated 20 kilometres north of the municipality of Jasper, in the Athabasca Valley and is visible from Highway 16 and the Canadian. Its nearest higher peak is Cliff Mountain, 5.0 km (3.1 mi) to the west. Esplanade Mountain was named in 1916 by Morrison P. Bridgland for its long, flat top resembling an esplanade. Bridgland (1878-1948) was a Dominion Land Surveyor who named many peaks in Jasper Park and the Canadian Rockies. The mountain's name was officially adopted in 1956 by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.

Gargoyle Mountain (2,693m - 8,835 ft)  is a mountain summit located in Jasper National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada. The peak is situated 23 kilometres north of the municipality of Jasper, and is a prominent landmark in the Athabasca Valley visible from Highway 16 and the Canadian. Its nearest higher peak is Cliff Mountain, 5.5 km (3.4 mi) to the west.  Gargoyle Mountain was named in 1916 by Morrison P. Bridgland for the fact a stream heads at the mountain, like a gargoyle or spout.  Bridgland (1878-1948) was a Dominion Land Surveyor who named many peaks in Jasper Park and the Canadian Rockies.  The mountain's name was officially adopted in 1956 by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.


The painter  
Lawren Stewart Harris, (1885–1970) was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
For Harris, art was to express spiritual values as well as to represent the visible world. North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), an image of a solitary weathered tree stump surrounded by an expanse of dramatically lit sky, effectively evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.
The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. Several members of the Group of Seven later became members of the Canadian Group of Painters including Harris, A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.
From 1934 to 1937, Harris lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he painted his first abstract works, a direction he would continue for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and helped found the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of artists who advocated a spiritual form of abstraction.
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist. He was buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where his work is now held.
On November 26, 2015 his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works.
In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.
Source:
- Lawren S. Harris biography in  National Gallery of Canada notice

MOUNT ASSINIBOINE PAINTED BY FRED BUCHWITZ

FRED BUCHWITZ  (bn.1949)

Mount Assiniboine (3,618m - 11,870ft) 

Canada

The mountain

Mount Assiniboine (3,618m - 11,870ft) also known as Assiniboine Mountain, is a pyramidal peak mountain located on the Great Divide, on the British Columbia/Alberta border in Canada.
It is the highest peak in the Southern Continental Ranges of the Canadian Rockies. Mt. Assiniboine rises nearly 1,525 m (5,003 ft) above Lake Magog. Because of its resemblance to the Matterhorn in the Alps, it is nicknamed the "Matterhorn of the Rockies". Mt. Assiniboine was named by George M. Dawson in 1885. When Dawson saw Mt. Assiniboine from Copper Mountain, he saw a plume of clouds trailing away from the top. This reminded him of the plumes of smoke emanating from the teepees of Assiniboine Indians. Mt. Assiniboine lies on the border between Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park, in British Columbia, and Banff National Park, in Alberta. The park does not have any roads and thus can only be reached by a six-hour hike 27 km (17 mi), three-hour bike ride (now disallowed to reduce human / grizzly encounters) or helicopter. The usual approach is via Bryant Creek. From Canmore follow the Smith-Dorien road to the Mount Shark parking lot. The trail is well signed. A helipad is also here.
Climbing 
Mt. Assiniboine was first climbed in 1901 by James Outram, Christian Bohren and Christian Hasler. In 1925, Lawrence Grassi became the first person to make a solo ascent. On August 27, 2001, Bohren's granddaughter Lonnie along with three others made a successful ascent, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first ascent. There are no scrambling routes up Mt. Assiniboine. The easiest mountaineering routes are the North Ridge and North Face at YDS 5.5 which are reached from the Hind Hut.
Source:
- Summitpost.org
- Wikipedia

The painter
Fred Buchwitz was born in Europe and came to Canada in 1949  at the  age of four. His family settled in the town of Chilliwack nestled in Southern British Columbia. Fred’s artistic talent was first noticed when he was thirteen. He spent a great deal of time painting murals around his school with a friend. One of his most memorable murals illustrated the history of western art.  After high school, Fred moved to Vancouver and started a job as a window displayman for Woodwards. Fred worked part-time hours at Woodwards one year while he took courses in graphic design at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. However, he was unable to complete the program because his wife gave birth to their first child. In 1974, Fred was given the opportunity to display his original paintings Thursday to Saturdays in Guildford Town Centre. Fred was able to sell more of his work from his studio as a result of this exposure. After a year of displaying at Guildford, Fred traveled with a group of painters known as “Great Western Artists.” They traveled throughout western Canada and it was on these trips that Fred discovered the beauty and majesty of the Rocky Mountains. The Rockies have become a major theme in his work ever since. Fred also started releasing limited edition prints and art cards of his work.
Source:
- Art Country Canada.com