LE MONT VINAIGRE PAR PABLO PICASSO

 

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973)
Le Mont Vinaigre  (614m)
France( Côte d'Azur)

In Paysage, Mougins, 1972

La montagne
Le mont Vinaigre (614m) est le point culminant du massif de l'Esterel. Il se trouve sur la commune de Fréjus. Il dispose d'un héliport sous son sommet. Le mont Vinaigre est accessible depuis la route DN7 entre Fréjus et Mandelieu-la-Napoule. Une barrière en ferme l'accès un kilomètre après la maison forestière du Malpey. Seuls les véhicules de l'office national des forêts ou véhicules de secours sont autorisés à dépasser ce point. Cette route est interdite entre 21 heures et 6 heures du matin. Le mont Vinaigre était le repaire de brigands : Gaspard de Besse (1757-1781), qui détroussait les voyageurs et agents du fisc au 18e siècle, s'y abritait. Son histoire inspira Jean Aicard pour son roman Maurin des Maures. C'était aussi le refuge des forçats évadés du bagne de Toulon.

Le peintre
Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, également connu sous le nom de Pablo Picasso, était un peintre, sculpteur, graveur, céramiste, scénographe, poète et dramaturge espagnol qui a passé la majeure partie de sa vie adulte en France. Considéré comme l'un des artistes les plus grands et les plus influents du 20e siècle, il est connu pour avoir co-fondé le mouvement cubiste, l'invention de la sculpture construite, la co-invention du collage et pour la grande variété de styles qu'il a contribué à développer. et explorer. Parmi ses œuvres les plus célèbres figurent le proto-cubiste Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) et Guernica (1937), un portrait du bombardement de Guernica par les forces aériennes allemandes et italiennes à la demande du gouvernement nationaliste espagnol pendant la guerre civile espagnole. Guerre. Picasso a fait preuve d'un talent artistique extraordinaire dès ses premières années, peignant de manière naturaliste tout au long de son enfance et de son adolescence. Au cours de la première décennie du 20e siècle, son style change à mesure qu'il expérimente différentes théories, techniques et idées. Après 1906, l'œuvre fauviste de l'artiste un peu plus âgé Henri Matisse a motivé Picasso à explorer des styles plus radicaux, déclenchant une rivalité fructueuse entre les deux artistes, qui par la suite ont été souvent associés par la critique comme les leaders de l'art moderne. L'œuvre de Picasso est souvent classée en périodes. Bien que les noms de bon nombre de ses périodes ultérieures soient débattus, les périodes les plus communément acceptées dans son œuvre sont la période bleue (1901-1904), la période rose (1904-1906), la période d'influence africaine (1907-1909), Le cubisme analytique (1909-1912) et le cubisme synthétique (1912-1919), également appelés période de cristal. Une grande partie de l'œuvre de Picasso de la fin des années 1910 et du début des années 1920 est de style néoclassique, et son travail du milieu des années 1920 présente souvent des caractéristiques du surréalisme. Ses œuvres ultérieures combinent souvent des éléments de ses styles antérieur. Exceptionnellement prolifique tout au long de sa longue vie, Picasso a acquis une renommée universelle et une immense fortune grâce à ses réalisations artistiques révolutionnaires, et est devenu l'une des figures les plus connues de l'art du XXe siècle. Le nombre total d'œuvres d'art qu'il a produites a été estimé à 50 000, dont 1 885 peintures ; 1 228 sculptures ; 2 880 céramiques, environ 12 000 dessins, plusieurs milliers de gravures et de nombreuses tapisseries et tapis...
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2024- Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

 

L 'ESTEREL BY FELIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON (1865-1925) 

Mont Vinaigre (618m - 2,027ft) 

France (Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur) 

1. In L’Estérel et la baie de Cannes, 1925, oil on canvas

2.  In L’Estérel et la baie de Cannes, 1925, oil on canvas (détail) 

The mountain 

This view of L'Esterel and the Baie de Cannes by  FELIX Valloton  allows to see a large part of the Massif of the Esterel and its seven summits :  Mont Vinaigre (618 m - 2,027 ft), Mont Suvières (558m - 1831ft), Sommet du Marsaou (548m -1,798ft), Pic de l'Ours (492m -1,614ft), Pic du Cap-Roux  (453m -1,486ft), the Saint-Pilon (442 m -1,450ft) and the Sommet Pelet (439m -1,440ft).
The Esterel Massif is a low altitude volcanic mountain range of 32,000 hectares located on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It covers the south-east of the Var, a small part located in the Alpes-Maritimes, France. Separated from the Moors by the valley of the Argens, the relief of the Esterel is shredded and deeply ravined. The massif extends over 320 km2 of which 130 km2 classified and protected. 60 km2 of state forest are maintained by the National Forestry Office.

The heart of the massif is protected by a decree of 1996. In the part of Alpes-Maritimes, a departmental park of 772 ha was created in 1997. It shelters a population of red deer, introduced in 1961. In the Var, a Biological reserve protects nearly 800 hectares. The massif is a site of the Natura 2000 network responsible for the preservation of nature in Europe.

Mount Vinaigre (Mount Vinagar) located in Frejus is the highest peak in the Massif de l' Esterel and was the hideout of robbers. Gaspard de Besse (1757-1781), which robbed travelers and tax agents in the 18th century, sheltered there. Mont Vinaigre was also the refuge of the convicts escaped from the jail in Toulon.Today, Mount Vinaigre is not completely accessible to the public It can be approached by taking  the road DN7 between Fréjus and Mandelieu-la-Napoule, 3 km before the crossing with the road D237. There, a paved DFCI trail could allow access to its summit but it ends 1 kilometer after the forest house of Malpey.  Only vehicles belonging to the French National Forestry Office or rescue vehicles are allowed to pass this point.

The painter 
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
In 1899 Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a wealthy young widow with three children, and in 1900 he attained French citizenship. Around 1899, his printmaking activity diminished as he concentrated on painting, developing a sober, often bitter realism independently of the artistic mainstream. His Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1907) was painted as an apparent response to Picasso's portrait of the previous year, and in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Stein described the very methodical way in which Vallotton painted it, working from top to bottom as if lowering a curtain across the canvas.
Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."
In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.
Vallotton responded in 1914 to the coming of the First World War by volunteering for the French army, but he was rejected because of his age.  In 1915–16 he returned to the medium of woodcut for the first time since 1901 to express his feelings for his adopted country in the series, This is War, his last prints. He subsequently spent three weeks on a tour of the Champagne front in 1917, on a commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts. The sketches he produced became the basis for a group of paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette among them, in which he recorded with cool detachment the ruined landscape.  In his last years Félix Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on "composite landscapes", landscapes composed in the studio from memory and imagination. Always a prolific artist, by the end of his life he had completed over 1700 paintings and about 200 prints, in addition to hundreds of drawings and several sculptures.  He died on the day after his 60th birthday, following cancer surgery in Paris in 1925.

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2017 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MONT VINAIGRE & L'ESTEREL PAINTED BY CLAUDE MONET

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) 

Mont Vinaigre  (618m - 2,027ft) 

France (Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur) 

In Antibes,Montagnes de L'Estérel, 1888, oil on canvas,  Courtauld Institute Galleries London 

The mountain 

This view of L'Esterel from Antibes by Monet allows to see the whole Massif of the Esterel from Frejus to Antibes and its seven summits which are from left to right:  Mont Vinaigre (618 m- 2,027 ft), Mont Suvières (558m - 1831ft), Sommet du Marsaou (548m -1,798ft), Pic de l'Ours (492m-1,614ft),  Pic du Cap-Roux  (453m-1,486ft), the Saint-Pilon (442 m-1,450ft) and the Sommet Pelet (439m-1,440ft). The Esterel Massif is a low altitude volcanic mountain range of 32,000 hectares located on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It covers the south-east of the Var, a small part located in the Alpes-Maritimes, France. Separated from the Moors by the valley of the Argens, the relief of the Estelle is shredded and deeply ravined. The massif extends over 320 km2 of which 130 km2 classified and protected. 60 km2 of state forest are maintained by the National Forestry Office.

The heart of the massif is protected by a decree of 1996. In the part of Alpes-Maritimes, a departmental park of 772 ha was created in 1997. It shelters a population of red deer, introduced in 1961. In the Var, a Biological reserve protects nearly 800 hectares. The massif is a site of the Natura 2000 network responsible for the preservation of nature in Europe.

Mount Vinaigre (Mount Vinagar) located in Frejus is the highest peak in the Massif de l' Esterel and was the hideout of robbers. Gaspard de Besse (1757-1781), which robbed travelers and tax agents in the 18th century, sheltered there. Mont Vinaigre was also the refuge of the convicts escaped from the jail in Toulon.Today, Mount Vinaigre is not completely accessible to the public It can be approached by taking  the road DN7 between Fréjus and Mandelieu-la-Napoule, 3 km before the crossing with the road D237. There, a paved DFCI trail could allow access to its summit but it ends 1 kilometer after the forest house of Malpey.  Only vehicles belonging to the French National Forestry Office or rescue vehicles are allowed to pass this point.

The painter 

Oscar-Claude Monet  better known as Claude Monet  was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting « Impression, soleil levant » (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons exactly like the japanese artist  Hokusai (1760-1849) did with his 36 views of Mount Fuji.
Monet has been described as "the driving force behind Impressionism". Crucial to the art of the Impressionist painters was the understanding of the effects of light on the local colour of objects, and the effects of the juxtaposition of colours with each other. Monet's long career as a painter was spent in the pursuit of this aim.
In 1856, his chance meeting with Eugene Boudin, a painter of small beach scenes, opened his eyes to the possibility of plein-air painting. From that time, with a short interruption for military service, he dedicated himself to searching for new and improved methods of painterly expression. To this end, as a young man, he visited the Paris Salon and familiarised himself with the works of older painters, and made friends with other young artists.[54] The five years that he spent at Argenteuil, spending much time on the River Seine in a little floating studio, were formative in his study of the effects of light and reflections. He began to think in terms of colours and shapes rather than scenes and objects. He used bright colours in dabs and dashes and squiggles of paint. Having rejected the academic teachings of Gleyre's studio, he freed himself from theory, saying "I like to paint as a bird sings."
In 1877 a series of paintings at  Gare St-Lazare had Monet looking at smoke and steam and the way that they affected colour and visibility, being sometimes opaque and sometimes translucent. He was to further use this study in the painting of the effects of mist and rain on the landscape.  The study of the effects of atmosphere were to evolve into a number of series of paintings in which Monet repeatedly painted the same subject in different lights, at different hours of the day, and through the changes of weather and season. This process began in the 1880s and continued until the end of his life in 1926.
His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891. In 1892 he produced what is probably his best-known series, Twenty-six views of Rouen Cathedral. In these paintings Monet broke with painterly traditions by cropping the subject so that only a portion of the facade is seen on the canvas. The paintings do not focus on the grand Medieval building, but on the play of light and shade across its surface, transforming the solid masonry.
Other series include Peupliers, Matins sur la Seine, and the Nenuphars  that were painted on his property at Giverny. Between 1883 and 1908, Monet traveled to the Mediterranean, where he painted landmarks, landscapes, and seascapes, including a series of paintings in Antibes (above)  and Venice. In London he painted four series: the Houses of Parliament, London ; Charing Cross Bridge, ; Waterloo Bridge, and Views of Westminster Bridge. Helen Gardner writes: "Monet, with a scientific precision, has given us an unparalleled and unexcelled record of the passing of time as seen in the movement of light over identical forms."