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 =>
_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
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 =>
_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
