THE DÔME DE NEIGE DES ECRINS BY CHARLES-HENRI CONTENCIN

CHARLES-HENRI CONTENCIN (1898-1955)

The Dôme de Neige des Ecrins (4,009 m - 13, 154ft) 

France (Dauphiné)

In The Dôme de Neige des Ecrins, Dauphin Alps, France, oil on panel, 33 x 41 cm, 

 John Mitchell Fine paintings London 

The mountain
The Dôme de neige des Ecrins ( The Ecrins Snow Dome) (4,009 m - 13, 154ft) is an alpine peak at the foot of the Écrins Bar, at the border between the French departments of Isère and Hautes-Alpes in the Dauphiné region. The Blanc glacier is surrounded by peaks allowing you to get acquainted with the high mountains before the ascent of this "4000" and acclimatize your body to the altitude. The climb is usually from the Ecrins refuge (3,170 m) and takes three to four hours for trained alpinists. It is a glacial race without technical difficulty, except for the crossing of the summit rimaye, random.
The current climb record is 1 h 57 from the Carle yard (1,874 m), made by Mathéo Jacquemoud in June 2011; it improves the record of Kílian Jornet dating from 2005. The record for round-trip skiing in mountain is 2 h 46 from the meadow of Madame Carle, directed by Steven Blanc in May 2014.

The painter 
Charles-Henri Contencin (1898-1955) is a French painter who painted many landscapes of mountains and high mountains of the great Alpine peaks (mainly Mont Blanc and Massif and the Écrins). His palette is very characteristic. He particularly used the effects of sunrise or sunset over snow or glaciers. Raised in the Bernese Oberland to the age of 10-12 years, it was a lifelong mountain lover. Good climber, he was a member of the French Alpine Club, where he made the connection with the Mountain Painters Society (SPM). He made the First World War in the infantry and he received the War Cross. He then worked in an architectural office and at the Compagnie des chemins de Fer du Nord before joining the french national railways company, the SNCF, where he was responsible for engineering structures.
In addition to his professional designs it is also author of posters and handbills for the railways under the pseudonym "Charles-Henri." He is best known for its mountain paintings and left an important work. After many years of contempt coming mainly from parisian critics and intelligentsia, Contencin is now recognized worldwide as one of the major mountain painters of the 20th century. 

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE DOME DES NEIGES DES ECRINS PAINTED BY CARLOS DE HAES

CARLOS DE HAES (1829-1898)

Dôme de neige des Ecrins (4, 009 m  - 13,153 ft)

France (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) 

In Delfinado, oil on canvas, 1864,  Museo del Prado, Madrid

About this painting
In the  text of the Prado Museum about this painting, one can read :
 "To the left, bordered by bushes and shrubs, a path through which several cows pass and that goes towards the bottom of the valley in which the settlement of a population among the forest mass can be guessed. Closing the composition, the high heights of the Cordillera that runs along the Dauphiné  on whose summits persist snow patches that fade into the clarity of a clear sky dotted by some cloud."
 The painting recalls a summit of the Ecrins Bar range, possibly the Dôme de Neiges des Ecrins  (Ecrins snow dome) rather than the Ecrin bar itself...

The mountain 
The Domes de neige des Ecrins (Ecrins snow dome) (4,009 m - 13, 154ft ) is an alpine peak at the foot of the Écrins Bar, at the border between the French departments of Isère and Hautes-Alpes in the Dauphiné region (Delfinado in spanish). The Blanc glacier is surrounded by peaks allowing you to get acquainted with the high mountains before the ascent of this "4000" and acclimatize your body to the altitude. The climb is usually from the Ecrins refuge (3,170 m) and takes three to four hours for trained alpinists. It is a glacial race without technical difficulty, except for the crossing of the summit rimaye, random.
The current climb record is 1 h 57 from the Carle yard (1,874 m), made by Mathéo Jacquemoud in June 2011; it improves the record of Kílian Jornet dating from 2005. The record for round-trip skiing in mountain is 2 h 46 from the meadow of Madame Carle, directed by Steven Blanc in May 2014

The painter 
The spanish painter Carlos Sebastián Pedro Hubert de Haes was noted for the Realism in his landscapes, and was considered to be the "first contemporary Spanish artist able to capture something of a particularly Spanish 'essence' in his work". He was cited along with Jenaro Perez Villaamil and Aureliano de Beruete as one of the three Spanish grand masters of landscape painting, the latter of which was his pupil.
In the 1850s, Haes was involved in the rise of the Realist school of landscape. Coincidentally his landscape and wildlife paintings of the Monasterio de Piedra occurred at the time of an academic opening for the Painting School of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the selection to be made by a landscape competition. In 1857 he became the first professor of landscape painting, the first in Spain to teach painting directly from nature. In 1860, he became an Academic at the Royal Academy. In 1876, he presented at the National Exhibition with La Canal de Mancorbo en los Picos de Europa ("The Canal of Mancorbo in the Picos de Europa") later acquired by the Spanish state to be part of the collection of the Museo del Prado, because of its significance as a realistic Spanish landscape painting.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
A blog by Francis Rousseau