ROMAN KOCH / CRIMEAN MOUNTAINS PAINTED BY ISAAC LEVITAN

ISAAC LEVITAN (1860-1900)
The Roman-Koch (1,545 m - 5, 069 ft)
Ukraine (de jure) / Russia (de facto) 

From  In the Crimean Mountains, oil on canvas,  1886,  Tretyakov Gallery Moscow

The mountain
The Roman-Koch (1545m- ) or Mountain of the Romans is the highest peak of the Crimean mountain. Its name recalls the ancient Roman prefecture of the East of Cherson. This natural space is protected by the Crimean Nature Reserve. The Crimean Mountains form the Crimean extension of the Greater Caucasus. At its feet, along the Black Sea, lie the towns of Sevastopol, the largest port in Crimea, and Yalta, a seaside resort famous for agreements signed in 1945. Archaeologists have found the oldest anatomically modern human in Europe at the Buran-Kaya site in the Crimean Mountains. The fossils are 32,000 years old with artefacts related to Gravettian culture.

The painter
Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Исаа́к Ильи́ч Левита́н) was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape". Levitan's work was a profound response to the lyrical charm of the Russian landscape. Levitan did not paint urban landscapes; with the exception of the View of Simonov Monastery (whereabouts unknown), mentioned by Nesterov, the city of Moscow appears only in the painting Illumination of the Kremlin. During the late 1870s he often worked in the vicinity of Moscow, and created the special variant of the "landscape of mood"(see above), in which the shape and condition of nature are spiritualized, and become carriers of conditions of the human soul. During work in Ostankino, he painted fragments of the mansion’s house and park, but he was most fond of poetic places in the forest or modest countryside. Characteristic of his work is a hushed and nearly melancholic reverie amidst pastoral landscapes largely devoid of human presence. Fine examples of these qualities include The Vladimirka Road, 1892, Evening Bells, 1892, and Eternal Rest, 1894, all in the Tretyakov Gallery. Though his late work displayed familiarity with Impressionism, his palette was generally muted, and his tendencies were more naturalistic and poetic than optical or scientific. 

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT CHKHARA PAINTED BY ISAAC LEVITAN

ISAAC LEVITAN (1860-1900)
Mount Chkhara (5, 193m -17,037ft)
Russia, Georgia border

In The chain of mountains, 1897, Oil on canvas, Tetriakov Gallery

Thee mountain
Mount Chkhara (, 5,193 m - 17,037ft)  is a summit of the Greater Caucasus, on the border between Georgia and Russia. It is the highest point in Georgia, and the third highest peak in the Caucasus. It is located in the Svaneti region, along the Russian border, 88 km north of the city of Kutaisi, Georgia's second city. The summit is located in the central part of the Great Caucasus chain, south-east of Mount Elbruz (the highest mountain in Europe if we consider the Caucasus on the border with Asia). It is the easternmost summit and the highest point of the Bezengui wall, a wall which from Chkhara to Djangha dominates, 2,000 m high and 6 km wide, the Bezengui glacier to the north. It includes four peaks, from east to west: the northeast summit, 5,050 m, the eastern summit, highest point, the central summit 5,068 m, and the west summit 5,057 m. Its altitude varies significantly according to sources and maps.
It was climbed for the first time in September 1888 by the northeast ridge by the British John Garford Cockin with the Swiss guides Ulrich Almer and Christian Roth. This route is now the normal route, rated 4B-5A on the Russian side, or TD- on the Alpine side. The first complete crossing of the Bezengi wall, from Chkhara to the Lialver was carried out by the Austrians Karl Poppinger, Karl Moldan and Sepp Schindlmeister from March 23 to 28, 1931. Listed 5B in Russian dimension, it is one of the ridge crossings among the longest and most difficult in Europe.
The first ski descent, on the southern slope, was made in June 2008, by Jason Thompson, Seth Waterfall, and Tyler Jones.

The painter
Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Исаа́к Ильи́ч Левита́н) was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape". Levitan's work was a profound response to the lyrical charm of the Russian landscape. Levitan did not paint urban landscapes; with the exception of the View of Simonov Monastery (whereabouts unknown), mentioned by Nesterov, the city of Moscow appears only in the painting Illumination of the Kremlin. During the late 1870s he often worked in the vicinity of Moscow, and created the special variant of the "landscape of mood", in which the shape and condition of nature are spiritualized, and become carriers of conditions of the human soul (Autumn day. Sokolniki, 1879). During work in Ostankino, he painted fragments of the mansion’s house and park, but he was most fond of poetic places in the forest or modest countryside. Characteristic of his work is a hushed and nearly melancholic reverie amidst pastoral landscapes largely devoid of human presence. Fine examples of these qualities include The Vladimirka Road, 1892, Evening Bells, 1892, and Eternal Rest, 1894, all in the Tretyakov Gallery. Though his late work displayed familiarity with Impressionism, his palette was generally muted, and his tendencies were more naturalistic and poetic than optical or scientific.
 
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau