LE MONT ROSE PHOTOGRAPHIÉ EN AUTOCHROME PAR ALBERT LÉON

 

 

AUTOCHROME 

AUGUSTE LÉON (1857-1942)
Mont Rose- Pointe Dufour (4,664 m)
Suisse - Italie

In Le mont Rose et le glacier du Gorner, Suisse, Autochrome Lumière, 1912, 

Musée Départemental Albert Kahn

La montagne
Le mont Rose (4 634 m), ou plus récemment massif du Mont-Rose -  en titsch gressonard, Gletscher ou Glescher, littéralement « montagne glacée » ou « glacier » , en italien, Monte Rosa —, situé à la frontière entre la Suisse et l'Italie, est le deuxième plus haut massif des Alpes après celui du Mont-Blanc. Son point culminant, la pointe Dufour, à 4 634 m est le quatrième plus haut sommet des Alpes et le plus haut de Suisse.  Au sommet de la Signalkuppe est situé le plus haut bâtiment et refuge d'Europe, la cabane Reine-Marguerite, à 4 559 mètres. S'y trouvent aussi un relais météorologique et un centre de recherche sur les pathologies liées à l'altitude. Les accès les plus faciles aux sommets du mont Rose se font de Gressoney-La-Trinité et d'Alagna Valsesia. Des habitants de ces deux vallées furent les premiers à faire l'ascension de cimes qui portent désormais leur nom en leur honneur. C'est le cas de Giovanni Gnifetti, curé d'Alagna, avec la pointe Gnifetti.  Le mont Rose est équipé d'un refuge innovant et à l'architecture spectaculaire, la cabane du Mont-Rose mise en service en 2010. Cette construction se distingue par son degré d'autonomie énergétique et sa capacité à respecter l'environnement. Elle est constituée d'un bâtiment sur cinq niveaux dont trois sont situés le long d'une façade inclinée de 80 m2 qui récupère la chaleur solaire. Le projet a été élaboré par l’École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich en collaboration avec le Club alpin suisse, l’université de Lucerne et le Laboratoire fédéral d'essai des matériaux et de recherche

Le procédé photographique
Auguste Léon fut un photographe français membre de l'équipe des "Archives de la planète" d'Albert Kahn 
L'Autochrome Lumière est un des premiers procédés de photographie couleur. Breveté en 1903 par les frères Lumière en France et commercialisé pour la première fois en 1907, c'était le principal procédé de photographie couleur utilisé avant l'avènement du film couleur négatif au milieu des années 1930.
Entre 1909 et 1931, une collection de 72 000 photographies autochromes, documentant la vie à l'époque dans 50 pays à travers le monde, a été créée par le banquier français Albert Kahn. La collection, l'une des plus importantes du genre au monde, est conservée au musée Albert Kahn à la périphérie de Paris. Une nouvelle compilation d'images de la collection Albert Kahn a été publiée en 2008. Plusieurs images de la collection Albert Kahn ont déjà été publiées dans ce blog.
La National Geographic Society a largement utilisé les autochromes et autres plaques d'écran couleur en mosaïque pendant plus de vingt ans. 15 000 plaques autochromes originales sont encore conservées dans les archives de la Société.
Dans l'immense collection d'œuvres du photographe pictorialiste américain Arnold Genthe de la Bibliothèque du Congrès des États-Unis, 384 de ses plaques autochromes figuraient parmi les collections en 1955. De nombreux photographes l'ont également utilisé, comme ici, de manière anonyme.

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2023 - Wandering Vertexes ....
Errant au-dessus des Sommets Silencieux...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MONTE ROSA BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS ROFFIAEN

JEAN-FRANÇOIS ROFFIAEN ( 1820-1898) 

Pointe Dufour / Dufourspitze  (4,634 m - 7,103ft) 

Switzerland- Italy border  

In Sunrise on Monte Rosa seen from Riffelsee, Zermatt, oil on canvas  (72.5 x 118cm), 1871, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London 

About the painting 
In 1845 Roffiaen saw two paintings by Alexandre Calame at the Salon de Bruxelles. He was so impressed by them that the young Belgian was awarded a place to train in his new mentor’s Geneva studio for six months. His style and subject matter remained close to Calame’s throughout his life, but he travelled further afield to the Mediterranean. Roffiaen’s work was admired and collected by the royal families of Europe and this magnificent dawn view of Monte Rosa is probably the prototype version for a large two-and a half metre canvas, dated 1875, now in the Brussels museum together with several other pictures by him.

The mountain 
The  Pointe Dufour (4,634 m - 7,103ft), in german Dufourspitze, is the highest peak of Monte Rosa, (Mont Rose) a huge ice-covered mountain massif in the Alps. Dufourspitze is the highest mountain peak of both Switzerland and the Pennine Alps and is also the second-highest mountain of the Alps and Europe outside the Caucasus. It is located between Switzerland (Canton of Valais) and Italy (Piedmont and Aosta Valley). Following a long series of attempts beginning in the early nineteenth century, Monte Rosa's summit, then still called Hцchste Spitze, was first reached on 1 August, the Swiss National celebration day, in 1855 from Zermatt by a party of eight climbers led by three guides: Matthдus and Johannes Zumtaugwald, Ulrich Lauener, Christopher and James Smyth, Charles Hudson, John Birkbeck and Edward Stephenson.
The name Pointe Dufour or Dufour Spitze  replaced the former name Höchste Spitze (English: Highest Peak) that was indicated on the Swiss maps before the Federal Council, on January 28, 1863, decided to rename the mountain in honor of Guillaume-Henri Dufour. Dufour was a Swiss engineer, topographer, co-founder of the Red Cross and army general who led the Sonderbund campaign. This decision followed the completion of the Dufour Map, a series of military topographical maps created under the command of Dufour.
The point just 80 m (260 ft) east of the Dufourspitze and only 2 metres lower, the Dunantspitze, was renamed in 2014 in honor of Henry Dunant, the main founder of the Red Cross.

The painter 
Jean François Xavier Roffiaen was a Belgian landscape painter who specialized in painting Alpine landscapes. He followed his artistic studies at the Academy of Brussels (1839–1842), notably under the famous vedutiste, François Bossuet (1789–1889) who was responsible for teaching him perspective and who was the authority on landscapes and city views.
The years 1850–1860 were those of Roffiaen's  greatest success, including numerous sales in Belgium, in Great Britain and in the United States, having works acquired by the Shah of Persia, by the Belgian and British royal houses, a study tour of Scotland commissioned by Queen Victoria, but which unfortunately never took place because of the sudden death of Albert, Prince Consort.  His painting, constructed according to indefinitely repeated formulae and each year becoming a little more tired, finished however by wearying the art chroniclers : « Critics of the press have often reproached him for the bias he shows in his painting. M Roffiaen has ignored them, he has continued to accumulate landscapes of Belgium, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, what do I know, combing them without rest, using the same formula, making do with the same sky, the same trees, the same rocks, unconcerned by the latitudes, according to the taste of a special public, who buy all of that and pay him handsomely. Leave M. Roffiaen alone, gentlemen of the press, he paints his little nature scenes one demands of him and knows well the reason why. » 
(G. H., L’Organe de Namur et de la Province, 1874).
François Roffiaen is equally illustrious in the domain of natural sciences, to which Jules Colbeau (1823–1881) introduced him in his youth. While children the two companions already took delight in observing nature in the little property that Colbeau’s parents owned in the suburbs of Namur. Once adult, they took a journey together to Switzerland (1852) where they collected insects, butterflies and molluscs.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

POINTE DUFOUR BY ADOLPHE BRAUN

 ADOLPHE BRAUN (1812-1877)

Pointe Dufour  / Dufour Spitze (4,634 m - 7,103ft) 

 Switzerland - Italy border 

1. In Le Mont Rose, 1860 

2. In  Le Mont Rose  between 1863 and 1865, Musée Condé Chantilly

The Mountain 

The  Pointe Dufour (4,634 m - 7,103ft) , in german Dufourspitze, is the highest peak of Monte Rosa, (Mont Rose) a huge ice-covered mountain massif in the Alps. Dufourspitze is the highest mountain peak of both Switzerland and the Pennine Alps and is also the second-highest mountain of the Alps and Europe outside the Caucasus. It is located between Switzerland (Canton of Valais) and Italy (Piedmont and Aosta Valley). Following a long series of attempts beginning in the early nineteenth century, Monte Rosa's summit, then still called Hцchste Spitze, was first reached on 1 August, the Swiss National celebration day, in 1855 from Zermatt by a party of eight climbers led by three guides: Matthдus and Johannes Zumtaugwald, Ulrich Lauener, Christopher and James Smyth, Charles Hudson, John Birkbeck and Edward Stephenson.
The name Pointe Dufouror Dufour Spitze  replaced the former name Höchste Spitze (English: Highest Peak) that was indicated on the Swiss maps before the Federal Council, on January 28, 1863, decided to rename the mountain in honor of Guillaume-Henri Dufour. Dufour was a Swiss engineer, topographer, co-founder of the Red Cross and army general who led the Sonderbund campaign. This decision followed the completion of the Dufour Map, a series of military topographical maps created under the command of Dufour.
The point just 80 m (260 ft) east of the Dufourspitze and only 2 metres lower, the Dunantspitze, was renamed in 2014 in honor of Henry Dunant, the main founder of the Red Cross.

The photographer

Adolphe Braun was a French photographer, best known for his floral still lifes, Parisian street scenes, and grand Alpine landscapes. One of the most influential French photographers of the 19th century, he used contemporary innovations in photographic reproduction to market his photographs worldwide. In his later years, he used photographic techniques to reproduce famous works of art, which helped advance the field of art history.
Photography historian Naomi Rosenblum described Braun's work as representative of the relationship between art and commercialism in the mid-19th century. His self-sustaining Mulhouse studio helped elevate photography from a craft to a full-scale business enterprise, producing thousands of unique images which were reproduced and marketed throughout Europe and North America.  Rosenblum also suggests that Braun's detailed reproductions of works of art in European museums brought these works to art students in North America, providing a major catalyst for the field of art history in the United States. Subsequent photographs focused on Alpine landscapes, especially lake scenes, and glacier scenes. Unlike many landscape photographers during this period, Braun liked to include people in his scenes. Photography historian Helmut Gernsheim suggested that Braun was one of the most skillful photographers of his era in rendering composition.  While not known as a portraitist, he did take portraits of several notable individuals, including Pope Pius IX, Franz Liszt, and the Countess of Castiglione, mistress of Napoleon III. Braun's work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the George Eastman House, and the Musйe d'Orsay.
His photographs of Parisian street scenes and Alpine landscapes are frequently reproduced in works on the history of photography.