google.com, pub-0288379932320714, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 GRAVIR LES MONTAGNES... EN PEINTURE: Spain
Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts

Thursday, June 8, 2023

EL MULHACEN PEINT PAR EUGÈNE DELACROIX


EUGÈNE DELACROIX (1798-1863) El Mulhacen (3,479 m) Espagne (Andalousie)  In "Salobrña", aquarelle sur papier, Musée Delacroix, Paris.
 
EUGÈNE DELACROIX (1798-1863)
El Mulhacen (3,479 m)
Espagne (Andalousie)

In "Salobrña", aquarelle sur papier, Musée Delacroix, Paris.

A propos de cette œuvre : 
C'est au cours d'une de ces voyages vers l'Afique du Nord que Delacroix saisit dans son carnet cette aquarelle du Mulhacen que l'on aperçoit ici  dans le lointain derriere le  piton du village de Salobreña  au premier plan qui donne son nom à cette œuvre. 

La montagne
Le mont Mulhacén (3,479 m) est le plus haut sommet de la péninsule Ibérique. Il se trouve dans la province de Grenade, dans le Sud-Est de l'Espagne et fait partie de la sierra Nevada, elle-même rattachée aux cordillères Bétiques. Son nom vient de Muley Hacén (espagnol), ou Mulay (titre honorifique donné en arabe correspondant à « seigneur ») Abû al-Hassan, avant-dernier roi de Grenade au 15e siècle. La légende dit qu'il est enterré au sommet de cette montagne qui reçut son nom. Il est le troisième sommet d'Europe occidentale par sa hauteur, après le mont Blanc (4 808 m) et le volcan  Etna (3 330 m ). Il s'agit de la montagne d'Europe la plus élevée en dehors des Alpes et du Caucase. Le point culminant du territoire espagnol est le volcan Teide (3 715 m) qui se trouve géographiquement sur les îles Canaries et donc en Afrique.  Le Mulhacén  se trouve à la jonction des communes de Trevélez, Güéjar-Sierra et Capileira. Il est visible par temps clair depuis la mer.

Le peintre
Eugène Delacroix est un peintre français considéré comme le principal représentant du romantisme, dont la vigueur correspond à l'étendue de sa carrière. À 40 ans, sa réputation est suffisamment établie pour lui permettre de recevoir d'importantes commandes de l'État. Il peint sur toile et décore les murs et plafonds de monuments publics. Il laisse en outre des gravures et lithographies, plusieurs articles écrits pour des revues et un Journal publié peu après sa mort et plusieurs fois réédité. Remarqué au Salon en 1824, il produit dans les années suivantes des œuvres s'inspirant d'anecdotes historiques ou littéraires aussi bien que d'événements contemporains (La Liberté guidant le peuple) ou d'un voyage au Maghreb (Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement). Concernant l'aquarelle, c'est en 1816,  que Delacroix rencontre Charles-Raymond Soulier, aquarelliste amateur anglophile élève de Copley Fielding revenu d'Angleterre. Cet ami et Richard Parkes Bonington familiarisent Delacroix avec l'art de l’aquarelle, qui l'éloigne des normes académiques enseignées aux Beaux-Arts. Les Britanniques associent l’aquarelle à la gouache et utilisent divers procédés comme l’emploi des gommes, de vernis et de grattages. Soulier lui enseigne également les rudiments de la langue anglaise. Du 24 avril à la fin août 1825 il voyage en Angleterre. Il découvre le théâtre de Shakespeare  deux ans avant qu'une troupe anglaise se déplace à Paris. Delacroix trouvera des sujets dans le théâtre tout au long de sa carrière : Hamlet et Horatio au cimetière (1839, musée du Louvre) et Hamlet et Horatio devant les fossoyeurs avec la tête de mort (1843, château-musée de Nemours).  Ces sujets se mêleront jusqu’à sa mort aux thèmes orientaux, littéraires, historiques ou religieux. À partir de ce voyage, la technique de l'aquarelle acquiert une importance dans son œuvre. Elle lui sera d'une grande aide lors de son voyage en Afrique du Nord, pour pouvoir en restituer toutes les couleurs.

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

Sunday, March 12, 2023

LA PEDRIZA PEINTE PAR JOAQUÍN SOROLLA Y BATISDA

JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BATISDA (1863-1923), La Pedriza (1, 066m) Espagne  In Vue de la Pedriza depuis El Pardo, 1907, Huile sur toile, 61.6×91.8 cm, Musée Sorolla Madrid 
 
JOAQUÍN SOROLLA Y BATISDA (1863-1923), 
La Pedriza (1, 066m) 
Espagne 
 
In Vue de la Pedriza depuis El Pardo, 1907, Huile sur toile, 61.6×91.8 cm, Musée Sorolla Madrid


La montagne
La Pedriza est une vaste formation rocheuse granitique située sur le versant sud de la Sierra de Guadarrama, dans la municipalité espagnole de Manzanares el Real, au nord-ouest de Madrid. Ce berrocal est formé de nombreuses falaises, parois rocheuses, éboulis, ruisseaux et prairies. C'est une zone de grand intérêt géologique, paysager et sportif. Les actions mécaniques qui se sont exercées sur ces roches pendant des millions d'années ont formé des formes très curieuses et attrayantes, en particulier pour les grimpeurs, car elles comptent près d'un millier de voies d'escalade de difficultés différentes. La randonnée est un autre sport largement pratiqué à La Pedriza. Preuve en est l'afflux massif de personnes durant de nombreux week-ends. L'endroit a servi de décor à certains westerns spaghetti dans les années 1960. Les quelque 3 200 hectares occupés par La Pedriza appartiennent au Parc National de la Sierra de Guadarrama, la plus grande zone protégée de la Communauté de Madrid. Les maquis méditerranéens abondent dans cette zone, comme le ciste, et d'autres typiques de la haute montagne, comme le genêt. La faune est également riche, notamment les rapaces et les reptiles.

Le peintre
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida est un peintre espagnol, connu pour ses scènes de genre alliant réalisme et lyrisme ainsi que pour ses scènes de plage et sa maîtrise de la couleur blanche dont il use avec brio dans de nombreux tableaux. Son style a été qualifié d'impressionniste, de post-impressionniste ou encore de luministe.
En novembre 1911, il signe une commande pour l'Hispanic Society of America de New York. En conséquence, entre 1913 et 1919, il réalise quatorze panneaux de très grandes dimensions pour décorer les salles de l'institution. Chacune est dédiée à une région d'Espagne. Chaque tableau mesure 3,5 mètres de haut ; mis bout à bout, ils mesurent 70 m de long, ce qui en fait un monument magistral d'Espagne. En 1912, Sorolla consacre l'année à voyager dans toute l'Espagne, faisant des croquis des scènes populaires ou coutumières auxquelles il assiste. Chaque tableau décrit des détails caractéristiques des diverses provinces espagnoles et portugaises. Après sa mort, sa veuve fait don de nombre de ses tableaux à l'État espagnol. Ces peintures forment le fonds du musée Sorolla situé depuis 1932 dans la maison de l'artiste à Madrid assemblant plusieurs centaines d'œuvres.  En 1933, Paul Getty achète dix de ses tableaux représentant des scènes de plages impressionnistes.

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


Thursday, March 9, 2023

PEÑA SANTA DE CASTILLA PEINTE PAR CARLOS DE HAES


CARLOS DE HAES (1829-1898) Peña Santa de Castilla (2,596m) Espagne  In Picos de Europa - Pena Santa de Castilla, Museo del Prado

CARLOS DE HAES (1829-1898)
Peña Santa de Castilla (2,596m)
Espagne (León)

In Picos de Europa - Pena Santa de Castilla, Museo del Prado 
 
La montagne  
Dans le massif des  Picos de Europa (Pics d'Europe), il y a de nombreux sommets qui semblent inaccessibles, mais s'il y en a un qui mérite plus cette qualification, c'est  bien la Peña Santa de Castilla 2,596m). Cela n 'apparait dans le tableau de Haes pris sous un angle  plutôt aimable qui semble adoucir la minéralité et l'aridité du sommet relegué tout en haut du tableau comme quelque chose de lointain.
La Peña Santa dispose itinéraire d'escalade assez abordable à l 'aide de cordes. 
Le massif des  Picos de Europa, massif  le plus élevé de la cordillère Cantabrique, sont situés entre les provinces des Asturies, León et la Cantabrie, à une trentaine de kilomètres de la mer. Ils culminent au Torre de Cerredo, à 2 649 m. Les dimensions approximatives du massif sont de 40 km de longueur (est-ouest) par 20 km de large (nord-sud) et une superficie de 502 km2. Le 30 mai 1995 a été créé le Parc national des pics d'Europe, intégrant un parc national aux dimensions plus modestes existant depuis le 22 juillet 1918.


L'artiste
Le peintre espagnol Carlos Sebastián Pedro Hubert de Haes était connu pour le réalisme de ses paysages et était considéré comme le "premier artiste espagnol contemporain capable de capturer quelque chose de particulièrement espagnole dans son travail". Il a souvent été cité comme l'un des trois grands maîtres espagnols de la peinture de paysage. Dans les années 1850, Haes participa à l'essor de l'école réaliste du paysage. En 1857, il devint le premier professeur de peinture de paysage en Espagne qui enseigna la peinture sur le sujet, en plein air directement d'après nature. En 1860, il devint académicien à l'Académie royale espagnole. En 1876, il se présenta à l'Exposition nationale avec La Canal de Mancorbo en los Picos de Europa ("Le canal de Mancorbo dans les Picos de Europa") acquis plus tard par l'État espagnol pour faire partie des collections du Museo del Prado, en raison de son importance dans l'Histoire de la peinture espagnole du paysage. 
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2023 - Wandering Vertexes ....
Errant au-dessus des Sommets Silencieux...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau  

Monday, February 13, 2023

LE DÉFILÉ DE PANCORBO PEINT PAR DARÍO DE REGOYOS Y VALDÉS

DARIO DE REGOYOS Y VALDES ( 1865-1913) Défilé de Pancorbo ( 1,434m) Espagne  In Pancorbo: Tren que pasa, Train, huile sur toile, 120 x 90xm, 1901 Museu National d'Art de Catalunya

 

DARIO DE REGOYOS Y VALDES ( 1865-1913)
Défilé de Pancorbo (1,434m)
Espagne

In Pancorbo: Tren que pasa, Huile sur toile, 120 x 90xm, 1901, Museu National d'Art de Catalunya

La montagne
Le défilé de Pancorbo (Desfiladero de Pancorbo) est une gorge qui entaille par le milieu les monts Obarenes au nord de la province de Burgos, en Espagne. Les monts Obarenes parfois appelés Sierra de Obarenes, sont une chaîne de moyenne montagne constituant l'extrémité du rameau sud-est de la cordillère Cantabrique, dans le Nord de l'Espagne, et culminant à 1, 434 m d'altitude au Pic Humión.
Situé sur le territoire de la commune homonyme de Pancorbo, il revêt une très grande importance pour les communications routières et ferroviaires dans le nord de l'Espagne. Ce défilé se présente comme une cluse creusée par le río Oroncillo, petit affluent rive droite de l'Èbre, à travers des hauteurs de calcaire dolomitique dans lesquels l'érosion a taillé d'imposants paysages rocheux ruiniformes qui contrastent brutalement avec les étendues tabulaires de la meseta plus au sud (ces reliefs sont au surplus complétés de véritables ruines, restes de forteresses construites autrefois pour veiller sur cette position stratégique).
Mettant en communication le bassin du Douro avec la haute vallée de l'Èbre, entre les villes de Briviesca et Miranda de Ebro, le défilé de Pancorbo est un point-clé sur l'itinéraire obligé reliant Madrid et la Castille au Pays basque et à l'ouest de la France. Pour cette raison on l'appelle localement la « porte de Castille » (Puerta de Castilla).
Ce passage était emprunté dès l'Antiquité par la voie romaine Bordeaux-Astorga, soit l'Iter XXXIV Ab Asturica Burdigalam de l'Itinéraire d'Antonin. Y passent aujourd'hui la route nationale N-I, une ligne de chemin de fer, et l'autoroute AP-1, qui toutes trois relient la capitale espagnole à la frontière française. Cette concentration de voies de communication a rendu nécessaire la construction d'ouvrages d'art (tunnels, viaducs) aux point les plus étroits de la trouée, qui rendent ce paysage de moins en moins semblable à celui décrit fans ce tableau. bien que l'on y voit dékà une locomotive à vaopeur. Doit encore s'y ajouter une ligne ferroviaire à grande vitesse.

Le peintre
Darío de Regoyos y Valdés, est un peintre espagnol, considéré comme un des plus importants représentants de l'Impressionnisme et du néo-impressionnisme dans son pays. Ses œuvres n'ont jamais  rencontré beaucoup de succès en Espagne.de son vivant.  Il avait d'ailleurs lui-même une attitude hostile vis-à-vis de l'art officiel, très éloigné de ce qu'il aimait dans la peinture européenne. Mais elles furent été très appréciées au Salon des indépendants de 1889 où il exposa avec Degas, Signac, Pissarro,  dans uen salle offerte par La Revue Blanche. Lorsque le critique d'art Félix Fénéon demande à Seurat quels peintres du « Groupe des XX » étaient ses disciples, il cita neuf noms parmi lesquels figurait celui de  Darío de Regoyos. Toutefois, si Regoyos adhère au pointillisme pendant quelques années, il s'en détache dès 1893 pour cultiver son talent de paysagiste "sombre". Regoyos a un goût très prononcé pour les paysages de la côte basque et de l'Espagne du nord, et il se différencie des impressionnistes français en traitant tous les thèmes : fêtes, scènes de rues, plage, marchés, bois. De retour en Espagne, il envoya régulièrement ses toiles en Belgique. Il participa ensuite aux nouveaux salons de la Libre Esthétique et aux réunions chez Edmond Picard, le mécène de l'association. Il eut pour amis les compositeurs Enrique Fernández Arbós et Isaac Albéniz, ainsi que l'écrivain Émile Verhaeren qui publia España negra après un voyage en Espagne en sa compagnie. Darío de Regoyos y Valdés est aujourd'hui quasiment inconnu en France sauf des spécialistes de l'impressionnisme. Er c'est bien dommage ! 

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

Monday, October 31, 2022

PUERTO DE PAGARES PEINT PAR CARLOS DE HAES

 

CARLOS DE HAES (1829-1898) Puerto de Pajares (1,378m - 4,520ft) Espagne (Asturias)
 

CARLOS DE HAES (1829-1898)
Puerto de Pajares (1,378m - 4,520ft)
Espagne (Asturias)

La montagne
Puerto de Pajares (1 378 m - 4 520 pieds) est un col de montagne dans les montagnes cantabriques situé à Pajares, en Espagne. C'est la principale voie de communication par chemin de fer et route gratuite entre les Asturies, la province de León et le centre de l'Espagne. Il existe une autoroute privée alternative à péage, L'AP-66.réputée pour son brouillard persistant  pendant les nuits d'été et sa déclivité qui atteint  jusqu'à 17%,.

L'artiste
Le peintre espagnol Carlos Sebastián Pedro Hubert de Haes était connu pour le réalisme de ses paysages et était considéré comme le "premier artiste espagnol contemporain capable de capturer quelque chose de particulièrement espagnole dans son travail". Il a souvent été cité comme l'un des trois grands maîtres espagnols de la peinture de paysage. Dans les années 1850, Haes participa à l'essor de l'école réaliste du paysage.  En 1857, il devint le premier professeur de peinture de paysage en Espagne qui enseigna la peinture sur le sujet, en plein air directement d'après nature. En 1860, il devint académicien à l'Académie royale espagnole.  En 1876, il  se présenta à l'Exposition nationale avec La Canal de Mancorbo en los Picos de Europa ("Le canal de Mancorbo dans les Picos de Europa") acquis plus tard par l'État espagnol pour faire partie des collections du Museo del Prado, en raison de son importance dans l'Histoire de la  peinture espagnole du paysage.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes ....
            Errant au-dessus des Sommets Silencieux...
            Un blog de Francis Rousseau

 

Saturday, October 22, 2022

CIRQUE DE BARROSA SKETCHED BY FRANZ SCHRADER


FRANZ SCHRADER (1844-1924), The Cirque de Barrosa (1,745m - 5,725 ft) France- Spain border (Pyrénées)  In "Le Cirque de Barrosa", watercolor


FRANZ SCHRADER (1844-1924),
The Cirque de Barrosa (1,745m - 5,725 ft)
France- Spain border (Pyrénées)

In "Le Cirque de Barrosa", watercolor


The painter
Jean-Daniel-François Schrader, better known as Franz Schrader, was a French mountaineer, geographer, cartographer and landscape painter. He made an important contribution to the mapping of the Pyrenees and was highly considered among the pyreneists.
He is the son of Prussian Ferdinand Schrader from Magdeburg, who emigrated to Bordeaux, and of Marie-Louise Ducos, cousin of geographers Élisée and Onésime Reclus. He shows a talent for drawing from an early age. In 1866, while staying with his friend Léonce Lourde-Rocheblave in Pau, he has a sort of revelation at the "spectacle grandiose de la barrière montagneuse des Pyrenées ".
His vocation strengthens when reading stories by Ramond de Carbonnières (1755-1827) (Les Voyages au Mont-Perdu) and by Henry Russell (1834-1909) (Les Grandes Ascensions des Pyrénées, guide d'une mer à l'autre).
While devoting the main part of his leisure to long hikes in the mountains, during which he gathers thousands of observations for his topographical records, he still finds time to paint numerous panoramas of the Pyrenees as well as the Alps which he also studies, and to acquire a solid formation in topography.
To facilitate topographical work in rugged terrain, he develops the orograph in 1873. His first great cartographic work, in 1874, is the map of the massif of Gavarnie-Mont-Perdu at a scale of 1:40 000, for which he collects the measurements with the participation of Lourde-Rocheblave from nearby Pau. That map triggers such a sensation that it is included in the annual Mémoires of the Société des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles de Bordeaux with an explanatory text the following year. The Club alpin français directory follows with the publication of an enthusiastic review, describing Schrader as qualified for "first rank topographer in a glorious master stroke". In 1876 he takes part in the creation of the Bordeaux section of the Club Alpin Français, becoming its first president.
In 1877 he travels to Paris with a recommendation from his cousins Élisée and Onésime Reclus. There, having met Émile Templier, nephew and collaborator of Louis Hachette, and Adolphe Joanne, president of the Parisian section of the Club Alpin Français, he is employed as a geographer by Librairie Hachette and is now able to practice his passion in the scope of his profession. He also gives geography lessons at the School of Anthropology and also becomes editor of the French Alpine Club directory
In 1927, three years after his death, his remains are transferred to a tomb on a slope of the Circus of Gavarnie (French Pyrenees). 

The mountain
The Cirque de Barrosa (1745m - (Circo de Barrosa in Spanish) is a glacial cirque located in the center of the Pyrenees chain, in Spain, in the comarca of Sobrarbe (province of Huesca, autonomous community of Aragon). Part of its ridge line forms the border with France.
It is a beautiful mountain circus, attractive for mountaineers, but it is distinguished by its geological structure in two floors, the upper floor being part of an overlap, and by the remains of an old mule track which crosses it from side to side. However, these two singularities are intimately linked since this path has been laid out on a natural cornice which runs, in the cliffs, at the limit between the two floors, which gives its route a great interest from a geological point of view.
In addition, the Cirque de Barrosa provides the opportunity to take an interest in several stories: those of mining in the region of the cirque, to which this path is linked; that of human relations between France and the Bielsa valley, via this path or neighboring passes; that of an episode of the Spanish Civil War, of which the Bielsa Valley was the scene; and that of Pyreneism, whose pioneers discovered the circus at the end of the 19th century.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Thursday, June 30, 2022

PICO DEL TEIDE SKETCHED BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT



ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859), Pico del Teide (3, 718 m -12, 198 ft) Tenerife - Canari Islands - Spain   In  "Intérieur du Cratère du Pic de Teneriffe " Dessin, Alexander von Humboldt

 

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859)
Pico del Teide (3, 718 m -12, 198 ft)
Tenerife - Canari Islands - Spain

 In  "Intérieur du Cratère du Pic de Teneriffe " Dessin, Alexander von Humboldt


The mountain
Pico del Teide (3,718m - 12,198 ft) (« Teide Peak") is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain. Before the 1495 Spanish colonization of Tenerife, the native Guanches called the volcano Echeyde, which in their legends referred to a powerful figure leaving the volcano, which could turn into hell. El Pico del Teide is the modern Spanish name.
Its summit is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic. If measured from its base on the ocean floor, it is at 7,500 m-24,600 ft the third highest volcano on a volcanic ocean island in the world after Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Its elevation makes Tenerife the tenth highest island in the world. It remains active: its most recent eruption occurred in 1909 from the El Chinyero vent on the northwestern Santiago rift.
Historical volcanic activity on the island is associated with vents on the Santiago or northwest rift (Boca Cangrejo in 1492, Montañas Negras in 1706, Narices del Teide or Chahorra in 1798 and El Chinyero in 1909) and the Cordillera Dorsal or northeast rift (Fasnia in 1704, Siete Fuentes and Arafo in 1705). The 1706 Montañas Negras eruption destroyed the town and principal port of Garachico, as well as several smaller villages.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus reported seeing "a great fire in the Orotava Valley" as he sailed past Tenerife on his voyage to discover the New World. This was interpreted as indicating that he had witnessed an eruption there. Radiometric dating of possible lavas indicates that in 1492 no eruption occurred in the Orotava Valley, but one did occur from the Boca Cangrejo vent.
The last summit eruption from Teide occurred about the year 850 CE, and this eruption produced the "Lavas Negras" that cover much of the flanks of the volcano.
About 150,000 years ago, a much larger explosive eruption occurred, probably of Volcanic Explosivity Index 5.
The United Nations Committee for Disaster Mitigation designated Teide a Decade Volcano because of its history of destructive eruptions and its proximity to several large towns, of which the closest are Garachico, Icod de los Vinos and Puerto de la Cruz. Teide, Pico Viejo and Montaсa Blanca form the Central Volcanic Complex of Tenerife.
In a publication of 1626, Sir Edmund Scory, who probably stayed on the island in the first decades of the 17th century, gives a description of Teide, in which he notes the suitable paths to the top and the effects the considerable height causes to the travellers, indicating that the volcano had been accessed via different routes before the 17th century. In 1715 the English traveler J. Edens and his party made the ascent and reported their observations in the journal of the Royal Society in London.
After the Enlightenment, most of the expeditions that went to East Africa and the Pacific had Teide as one of the most rewarding targets. The expedition of Lord George Macartney, George Staunton and John Barrow in 1792 almost ended in tragedy, as a major snowstorm and rain swept over them and they failed to reach the peak of Teide, just barely getting past Montaña Blanca.
During an expedition to Kilimanjaro, the German adventurer Hans Heinrich Joseph Meyer visited Teide in 1894 to observe ice conditions on the volcano. He described the two mountains as "two kings, one rising in the ocean and the other in the desert and steppes"
The volcano and its surroundings comprise Teide National Park, which has an area of 18,900 hectares (47,000 acres) and was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO on June 28, 2007. Teide is the most visited natural wonder of Spain, the most visited national park in Spain and Europe and – by 2015 – the eighth most visited in the world, with some 3 million visitors yearly. A major international astronomical observatory is located on the slopes of the mountain.

The cartographer
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.
On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a While. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783. Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.
Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit. Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.
At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Saturday, March 7, 2020

EL MULHACEN ( 3) PAINTED BY JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BATISDA

 

JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BATISDA (1863-1923)
Mulhacén (3, 478 m - 11,411ft)
Spain

In Granada, oil on canvas, 1890

The mountain
Mulhacén (3, 478 m - 11,411ft) is the highest mountain in continental Spain and in the Iberian Peninsula. It is part of the Sierra Nevada range in the Cordillera Penibética. It is named after Abu l-Hasan Ali, or Muley Hacén as he is known in Spanish, the penultimate Muslim King of Granada in the 15th century who, according to legend, was buried on the summit of the mountain.
Mulhacén is the highest peak in Europe outside the Caucasus Mountains and the Alps. It is also the third most topographically prominent peak in Western Europe, after Mont Blanc and Mount Etna, and is ranked 64th in the world by prominence. The peak is not exceptionally dramatic in terms of steepness or local relief. The south flank of the mountain is gentle and presents no technical challenge, as is the case for the long west ridge. The shorter, somewhat steeper north east ridge is slightly more technical. The north face of the mountain, however, is much steeper, and offers several routes involving moderately steep climbing on snow and ice (up to French grade AD) in the winter
Mulhacén can be climbed in a single day from the villages of either Capileira or Trevélez, but it is more common to spend a night at the mountain refuge at Poqueira, or in the bare shelter at Caldera to the west. Those making the ascent from Trevelez can also bivouac at the tarns to the northeast of the peak.


The painter
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was a Spanish painter. Sorolla excelled in the painting of portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of social and historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native land.
Sorolla's influence on some other Spanish painters, such as Alberto Pla y Rubio and Julio Romero de Torres, was so noted that they are described as "sorollista."  After his death, Sorolla's widow, Clotilde Garcia del Castillo, left many of his paintings to the Spanish public. The paintings eventually formed the collection that is now known as the Museo Sorolla, which was the artist's house in Madrid. The museum opened in 1932.
Early in 1911, Sorolla visited the United States for a second time, and exhibited 152 new paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum and 161 at the Art Institute of Chicago a few weeks later. Later that year Sorolla met Archie Huntington in Paris and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. These 14 magnificent murals, installed to this day in the Hispanic Society of America building in Manhattan, range from 12 to 14 feet in height, and total 227 feet in length.The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life.
Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific 'Vision of Spain', eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain. Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to the specific locales to paint them: Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile, Leon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costume. Each mural celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by July 1919.
Sorolla suffered a stroke in 1920, while painting a portrait in his garden in Madrid. Paralyzed for over three years, he died on 10 August 1923.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Sunday, December 15, 2019

CAP DE CREUS (2) BY SALVADOR DALI


SALVADOR DALI  (1904-1989) 
Cap de Creus (672 m - 2, 205ft)
Spain

In Paysage de Port Lligat avant la tempête, 1956, oil on canvas, 64,3 x 86,6 cm, Dali Museum 

The mountain 
Cap de Creus (672 m - 2, 205ft) is a peninsula and a headland located at the far northeast of Catalonia (Spain), some 25 kilometres (16 mi) south from the French border. The cape lies in the municipal area of Cadaquès, and the nearest large town is Figueres, capital of the Alt Empordа and birthplace of Salvador Dali. Cadaquès is the most well known village, home of artists and writers, with sophisticated atmosphere, near Port Lligat where Dali built his home in a paradise small bay. (Dalн depicted Cap de Creus in four of his most famous paintings : The Persistence of Memory in 1931 (above), Untitled (Persistence of Fair Weather) 1932-34 , Le Spectre du sex appeal in 1934 (above) and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, 1952-54 
Cap de Creus is the easternmost point of Catalonia and therefore of mainland Spain and the Iberian Peninsula. Mountains are the eastern foothills of the Pyrenees, the natural border between France and Spain. The peninsula has an area of 190 square kilometres (73 sq mi) of an extraordinary landscape value; a windbeaten very rocky dry region, with almost no trees, in contrast with a seaside rich in minuscule creeks of deep blue sea to anchor.The region is frequently swept by awful north wind "tramontana" (beyond mountains) which has caused many naval disasters.
Sant Pere de Rodes stands out at 500 metres (1,600 ft) of altitude, with views of the Cap and the Pyrenees. It is an 11th-century monastery whose first structures date from about 750 AD.
One legend tells that the Cap de Creus was hewn by Hercules.

The painter 
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Púbol, known professionally as Salvador Dalí, was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.
Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory was completed in August 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors. Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

MONTE PERDIDO BY EUGÈNE DELACROIX


 

EUGÈNE  DELACROIX  (1798-1863)
 Monte Perdido / Mont Perdu  (3,355 m -11,007ft)
Spain

In Album Pyrénées 1845, watercolor,  Musée du Louvre, Paris

The mountain
Monte Perdido (3,355 m -11,007ft), Mont Perdu in French, located in Spain, near the French-Spanish border, is the highest summit above sea level on the ridge separating the canyons of Ordesa and Pineta in the Pyrénées. This is the central peak of Tres Hermanas (Spanish) consist of the cylinder Marboré, the Soum de Ramond, and Monte Perdido itself.
Observable from the peaks popular at the time (including the Pic du Midi de Bigorre), Mount Perdido is no longer visible from the French valleys, as located behind the watershed line between France and Spain.
The limestone, rich in fossils are marine sedimentary origin. These sediments occupying a shallow sea were raised during the formation of the Pyrenees there are 40 million years (see article Geology of the Pyrénées).The summit a form of typical pyramidal peak of erosion by glaciers time of glaciation, he is still on the northeast side of the mountain the Monte Perdido glacier.
Ramond Carbonnières, is the firstpersonn to have discover Mount Perdu. Since his first stay in Barèges, in 1787, he was fascinated by the "massive limestone" of Marboré. In 1796, convinced that the nature of the limestone Marboré is "ordinary" Ramond determines an access route to the summit: the Estaubé Valley.

The painter
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.
However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible."
In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa, as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquered Algeria. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture. He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism. Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus…"
He managed to sketch some women secretly in Algiers, as in the painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as subjects for the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1837–41).
While in Tangier, Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city (see painting above), subjects to which he would return until the end of his life. Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable (1860), The Lion Hunt (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and Arab Saddling his Horse (1855).

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau




Sunday, July 28, 2019

PUIG MAJOR PAINTED BY SANTIAGO RUSIÑOL I PRATS


SANTIAGO RUSIÑOL I PRATS (1861-1931)
Puig Major de son Torella (1, 445m - 4,741 ft)
Spain, Balearic Islands (Majorca) 

In Serra de Tramuntana, oil on board, Municipal Museum of Valldemossa 


The mountain
The Puig Major (1, 445m - 4,741 ft) is the highest peak of the island of Majorca and the Balearic Islands in Spain. Its southern spur is called the Penyal des Migdia. In Majorcan, Puig means "peak" or "summit". "Major" indicates that this is the highest mountain in the range called the Serra de Tramuntana. the complete denomination of the mountain is Puig de son Torrella or Puig Major de son Torrella. This mountain is located on the eastern segment of the Serra de Tramuntana, between Soller and Pollença. It is less than five kilometers from the sea. Like the entire Serra de Tramuntana, the Puig Major appeared between the Paleozoic and the Miocene. It is the northeastern prolongation in the Mediterranean of the Betic Cordilleras which appeared on the peninsula.
It is a karst formation where limestone dominates.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War halted the construction of a funicular. The engineer Antoni Parietti Coll (Palma, 1899-1979) designed the project in 1934, from Cals Reis to the summit, for the construction of an astronomical observatory. In the early 1950s, this project competed with another, of a military nature. Since 1953, a radar of the Ejercito del Aire, the Spanish air force, has taken the top of the mountain and forbidden access to it, from its base, where there is a military ground. Originally, the United States installed the first radar, in order to give NATO air traffic control capabilities in the western Mediterranean. In 1958, an asphalt road leads from the base to the top.
The facilities were modernized in 2000.
In 2011, the Serra de Tramuntana, a chain of mountains among which the Puig Major dominates, is registered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Given the military destination of the place, hikes are practically prohibited. However, the Air Force agrees to derogations. The military site also includes a botanical observatory.

The painter
The spanish painter Santiago Rusiñol i Prats was also poet and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan modernisme movement. He influenced Pablo Picasso as a modern artist, and also left a number of modernist buildings in Sitges (Catalonia). Much of his work in Paris belonged to the Symbolism painting style. While there, he also attended the Gervex Academy, where he discovered his love for modernism. After returning to Spain, he settled in Sitges, founding a studio/museum named Cau Ferrat. When back in Barcelona, he was a frequent client of the café Els Quatre Gats, noted for its association the young Pablo Picasso. He went to Mallorca with the painter Joaquin Mir Trinxet, where they met the mystic Belgian painter William Degouve de Nuncques in 1899.
He was most known for his plays, landscape and garden paintings.
Rusiñol was born in Barcelona to a family of industrialists in textiles with origins in Manlleu. Despite the fact that he was the heir to the family's lucrative operations, by the time he was a teenager Rusiñol already showed a strong interest in painting and travel.
His training as painter started at Centro de Acuarelistas de Barcelona under the direction of Tomás Moragas. Like so many artists of the day, he travelled to Paris in 1889, living in Montmartre with Ramon Casas and Ignacio Zuloaga.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

PICO DE LES CABRONES BY CARLOS DE HAES


CARLOS DE HAES (1829-1898)
 Pico de los Cabrones (2,552 m - 8,372 ft) 
Spain (Asturias/León)

In Picos de Europa, oil on canvas, 1876, Museo nacional del Prado  
The mountain 
The Pico de los Cabrones (2,552 m-8,372ft) is a mountain in the north of Spain located in the Central massif of the Picos de Europa or massif of the Urrieles, in the division of the Principality of Asturias and the province of León. The first known ascent to the summit was made by Emilio Ribera Pou and Carlos Mier in 1933.  The silhouette of the peak of Los Cabrones, together with its spiers dominates spectacularly on the Jou de los Cabrones, where the mountain refuge of the same name located at 2100 m.
The summit is part of the ridge Cabrones-Cerredo (, one of the most alpine of the Picos de Europa, which connects the peak of Los Cabrones and the highest peak, the Torrecerredo peak of 2650 m. The first crossing to the ridge was completed by the Regil brothers on August 19, 1958.

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.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...


A blog by Francis Rousseau

Thursday, January 10, 2019

MONTE PERDIDO PAINTED BY FRANZ SCHRADER


FRANZ SCHRADER (1844-1924) 
Monte Perdido ou Mont Perdu  (3,355 m -11,007ft)
Spain
The mountain
Monte Perdido (3,355 m -11,007ft), Mont Perdu in French, located in Spain, near the French-Spanish border, is the highest summit above sea level on the ridge separating the canyons of Ordesa and Pineta  in the Pyrénées. This is the central peak of  Tres Hermanas (Spanish) consist of the cylinder Marboré, the Soum de Ramond, and Monte Perdido itself.
Observable from the peaks popular at the time (including the Pic du Midi de Bigorre), Mount Perdido is no longer visible from the French valleys, as located behind the watershed line between France and Spain.
The limestone, rich in fossils are marine sedimentary origin. These sediments occupying a shallow sea were raised during the formation of the Pyrenees there are 40 million years (see article Geology of the Pyrénées).The summit a form of typical pyramidal peak of erosion by glaciers time of glaciation, he is still on the northeast side of the mountain the Monte Perdido glacier.
Ramond Carbonnières, is the firstpersonn to have discover Mount Perdu. Since his first stay in Barèges, in 1787, he was fascinated by the "massive limestone" of Marboré.  In 1796, convinced that the nature of the limestone Marboré is "ordinary" Ramond  determines an access route to the summit: the Estaubé Valley.
August 11, 1797, he organized a real strong expedition of fourteen participants to the summit: The hard glacial corridor Tuquerouye. His guides, Laurens and Mouré, and a Spanish smuggler to lead the Frozen lake at the foot of the north face of the peak. A second expedition, September 7, follows the same route: very tricky climb through the corridor Tuquerouye in hard ice late in the season, return by parets of Pinewood and port. Ramond finds confirmation of his thesis: limestone, rich in fossils are marine sedimentary origin. His observations during these "expeditions" are the subject of his masterpiece: Travel to Monte Perdido and in the adjacent part of the Pyrénées appeared in the An IX of the French Revolution (1801). It was only in 1802 that Ramond decided to reach the summit of Mont Perdu.
On 6 August 1802 first known ascent to the summit of Mont Perdu by two Barèges guys, Rondo and Laurens led at the top by an Aragonese shepherd. Rondo and Laurens had been sent scouts to recognize the ascent route by Ramond Carbonnières that, with the same guides, realized the second ascent of Mont Perdu, 10 August 1802. The route followed was long and complicated: Valley Estaubé, port Pine, crossing parets from Pinewood to the col de Niscle east of Monte Perdido, glacier climbing and the southern slope terraces.

The painter 
Jean-Daniel-François Schrader, better known as Franz Schrader, was a French mountaineer, geographer, cartographer and landscape painter. He made an important contribution to the mapping of the Pyrenees and was highly considered among the pyreneists.
He is the son of Prussian Ferdinand Schrader from Magdeburg, who emigrated to Bordeaux, and of Marie-Louise Ducos, cousin of geographers Élisée and Onésime Reclus. He shows a talent for drawing from an early age.  In 1866, while staying with his friend Léonce Lourde-Rocheblave in Pau, he has a sort of revelation at the "spectacle grandiose de la barrière montagneuse des Pyrenées ".
His vocation strengthens when reading stories by Ramond de Carbonnières (1755-1827) (Les Voyages au Mont-Perdu) and by Henry Russell (1834-1909) (Les Grandes Ascensions des Pyrénées, guide d'une mer à l'autre).
While devoting the main part of his leisure to long hikes in the mountains, during which he gathers thousands of observations for his topographical records, he still finds time to paint numerous panoramas of the Pyrenees as well as the Alps which he also studies, and to acquire a solid formation in topography.
To facilitate topographical work in rugged terrain, he develops the orograph in 1873. His first great cartographic work, in 1874, is the map of the massif of Gavarnie-Mont-Perdu at a scale of 1:40 000, for which he collects the measurements with the participation of Lourde-Rocheblave from nearby Pau. That map triggers such a sensation that it is included in the annual Mémoires of the Société des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles de Bordeaux with an explanatory text the following year. The Club alpin français directory follows with the publication of an enthusiastic review, describing Schrader as qualified for "first rank topographer in a glorious master stroke". In 1876 he takes part in the creation of the Bordeaux section of the Club Alpin Français, becoming its first president.
In 1877 he travels to Paris with a recommendation from his cousins Élisée and Onésime Reclus. There, having met Émile Templier, nephew and collaborator of Louis Hachette, and Adolphe Joanne, president of the Parisian section of the Club Alpin Français, he is employed as a geographer by Librairie Hachette and is now able to practice his passion in the scope of his profession. He also gives geography lessons at the School of Anthropology and also becomes editor of the French Alpine Club directory
In 1927, three years after his death, his remains are transferred to a tomb on a slope of the Circus of Gavarnie (French Pyrenees).

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 


Friday, January 4, 2019

PICOS DE EUROPA PAINTED BY CARLOS DE HAES


CARLOS DE HAES ( 1829-1898) 
Picos de Europa  (2,445 m - 8,022 ft)
Spain (Asturias) 

 In A canal de Mancorbo en los Picos de Europa,1876, Museo nacional del Prado 

About he painting
The place that appears in this painting lies at the foot of mount Andara, on the eastern side of Picos de Europa, above the village of Argüébanes in the Cantabrian county of Liébana. Haes fits the landscape’s geographical features into a clear structure of diagonal lines that brings out the stony peak rising from the back of the canal at the center of the composition, and flanked by the slopes of the two foothills in the foreground. The peak projects a shadow on the left foothill, that contrasts with the brightly illuminated face of the right one.

The mountain 
 The Picos de la Europa   (2,445 m - 8,022 ft) is  a mountainous massif located in the north of Spain that belongs to the central part of the Cantabrian mountain range. Although not very extensive, its proximity to the sea makes it lavish in geographic features of great interest. Currently, the Picos de Europa National Park is the second most visited national park in Spain.
This limestone formation extends through Cantabria, León and the Principality of Asturias, and its heights stand out, in many cases above 2500 m, because of how close they are to the Cantabrian Sea, because at its northernmost point they are only a short distance away. 15 kilometers from the sea.

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.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
A blog by Francis Rousseau

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

TORRES DELLA CEBOLLEDA III PAINTED BY CARLOS DE HAES



CARLOS DE HAES ( 1829-1898) 
Torres della Cebolleda III  (2,445 m - 8,022 ft)
Spain (Asturias) 

 In Picos de Europa, oil on canvas, c. 1872-1875   Museo nacional del Prado 

The mountain 
Torre de Cebolleda III is located in the Western Massif of the Picos de Europa or Cornión, on the edge of the Asturian councils of Amieva and Cangas de Onís in the Cantabrian Mountains. It is the main and highest peak of the three towers called Torres de Cebolleda. The difficulty of his ascension is classified as something difficult higher. The normal itinerary starts from the Lakes of Covadonga and passes through the refuge of Vegarredonda.
Torre de CebolledaIII is part of the  The Picos de la Europa massif, a mountainous massif located in the north of Spain that belongs to the central part of the Cantabrian mountain range. Although not very extensive, its proximity to the sea makes it lavish in geographic features of great interest. Currently, the Picos de Europa National Park is the second most visited national park in Spain.
This limestone formation extends through Cantabria, León and the Principality of Asturias, and its heights stand out, in many cases above 2500 m, because of how close they are to the Cantabrian Sea, because at its northernmost point they are only a short distance away. 15 kilometers from the sea.

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.

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

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

PECA VIEJA PAINTED BY DAVID BOMBERG


http://wanderingvertexes.blogspot.com 

DAVID BOMBERG (1890-1957)  
Peca Vieja (2,617m) 
Spain (Asturias)

In Sunrise in the mountains, Picos de Asturias, oil on canvas, 1935

The mountain
Peca Vieja (2,617m) is a mountain that is one of the Picos de Europa, also known as Picos de Aturias or Picos in Spain. The peaks of Europe (in Spanish: Picos de Europa, often called Los Picos), the highest massif of the Cordillera Cantabria, are located between the provinces of Asturias, Leûn and Cantabria, about thirty kilometers from the sea. They culminate in Torre de Cerredo, at 2,648 m.
The approximate dimensions of the massif are 40 km long (east - west) by 20 km wide (north - south) and an area of ​​502 km2. On May 30, 1995, the Picos de Europa National Park was created. For sailors coming from the west on the Atlantic Ocean who sailed by sight, Los Picos was the first land visible on the horizon, which explains the origin of the name. They are framed in the north by the Sierra de Cuera and the Sierra del Escudo, to the south by the Sierra de Alba and to the west by the Sierra de Ave.

The painter 
David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington.  Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between the senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time.
Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing a more expressionist technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 


Wednesday, October 10, 2018

PUIG FUMAT BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT

http://wanderingvertexes.blogspot.com

JOHN SINGER SARGENT  (1856-1925)
 Puig Fumat  (384 m -1,260ft)
Spain (Mallorca)

In Mallcorca- Cap san Vicente, watercolour, The Brooklyn Museum

The mountain 
Puig  Fumat (384m)  is the cape at the northeastern tip of Mallorca dominating Cape Formentor and the bay of San Vicente. In 1925, Antoni Parietti Coll (Palma, 1899-1979) made the route between Port de Pollença and the end of the peninsula of Formentor, opening ample tourism in this portion, as well as the perspective of the luxury hotel.

The painter 
John Singer Sargent  was an American artist who  created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Switzerland, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. He was trained in Paris prior to moving to London. Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, but  in later life he expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. He lived most of his life in Europe.  Each destination offered pictorial stimulation and treasure.  Even at his leisure, in escaping the pressures of the portrait studio, he painted with restless intensity, often painting from morning until night.  His hundreds of watercolors of Venice are especially notable, many done from the perspective of a gondola. His colors were sometimes extremely vivid and as one reviewer noted, "Everything is given with the intensity of a dream." In the Middle East and North Africa Sargent painted Bedouins, goatherds, and fisherman. In the last decade of his life, he produced many watercolors in Maine, Florida, and in the American West, of fauna, flora, and native peoples.
With his watercolors, Sargent was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes. And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness.   His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1905. In 1909, he exhibited 86 watercolors in New York City, 83 of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charteris wrote in 1927: 'To live with Sargent's water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world, 'the refluent shade' and 'the Ambient ardours of the noon.'
Although not generally accorded the critical respect given Winslow Homer, perhaps America's greatest watercolorist, scholarship has revealed that Sargent was fluent in the entire range of opaque and transparent watercolor technique, including the methods used by Homer.
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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 


Tuesday, August 28, 2018

PICO CALDOVEIRO PAINTED BY DAVID BOMBERG


http://wanderingvertexes.blogspot.com

DAVID BOMBERG (1890-1957) 
Pico Caldoveiro (1,357 m - 4,452 ft)
Spain (Asturias) 

In The Mountains of Asturias, Spain, 1925,  oil on canvas, Private collection 

The Mountain 
Pico Caldoveiro (1,357 m - 4,452 ft) is a protected mountain range in Asturias, Northern Spain, It spans the parishes of Yernes, Proaza, Tameza, Grau (Grado), and Teberga (Teverga). Minerals found in Caldoveiro mines include Fluorite, Calcite, and Quartz. The Asturian administration uses Pico Caldoveiro in its tourism advertising, describing the mountain range as so:
The varied vegetation of this nature area and the different processes of erosion that sculpt contrasting terrain form a picturesque landscape dotted with small mountain lakes and high pastures with stone huts known as corros.

The painter 
David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington.  Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between the senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time.
Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing a more expressionist technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 


Tuesday, July 31, 2018

EL MULHACEN (3) BY JOAQUIN SOROLLA


 JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BATISDA (1863-1923),
  El Mulhacén  (3, 478 m - 11,411ft)
Spain

 In  La sierra Nevada Spain from the Alhambra, Granada 

The mountain 
Mulhacén (3, 478 m - 11,411ft) is the highest mountain in continental Spain and in the Iberian Peninsula. It is part of the Sierra Nevada range in the Cordillera Penibética. It is named after Abu l-Hasan Ali, or Muley Hacén as he is known in Spanish, the penultimate Muslim King of Granada in the 15th century who, according to legend, was buried on the summit of the mountain.
Mulhacén is the highest peak in Europe outside the Caucasus Mountains and the Alps. It is also the third most topographically prominent peak in Western Europe, after Mont Blanc and Mount Etna, and is ranked 64th in the world by prominence.  The peak is not exceptionally dramatic in terms of steepness or local relief. The south flank of the mountain is gentle and presents no technical challenge, as is the case for the long west ridge. The shorter, somewhat steeper north east ridge is slightly more technical. The north face of the mountain, however, is much steeper, and offers several routes involving moderately steep climbing on snow and ice (up to French grade AD) in the winter
Mulhacén can be climbed in a single day from the villages of either Capileira or Trevélez, but it is more common to spend a night at the mountain refuge at Poqueira, or in the bare shelter at Caldera to the west. Those making the ascent from Trevelez can also bivouac at the tarns to the northeast of the peak.

The painter 
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida  was a Spanish painter.  Sorolla excelled in the painting of portraitslandscapes, and monumental works of social and historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native land.
Sorolla's influence on some other Spanish painters, such as Alberto Pla y Rubio and Julio Romero de Torres, was so noted that they are described as "sorollista."
After his death, Sorolla's widow, Clotilde Garcia del Castillo, left many of his paintings to the Spanish public. The paintings eventually formed the collection that is now known as the Museo Sorolla, which was the artist's house in Madrid. The museum opened in 1932.
Early in 1911, Sorolla visited the United States for a second time, and exhibited 152 new paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum and 161 at the Art Institute of Chicago a few weeks later. Later that year Sorolla met Archie Huntington in Paris and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. These 14 magnificent murals, installed to this day in the Hispanic Society of America building in Manhattan, range from 12 to 14 feet in height, and total 227 feet in length.The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life.
Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific 'Vision of Spain', eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain. Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to the specific locales to paint them: NavarreAragonCataloniaValenciaElcheSevilleAndalusiaExtremaduraGaliciaGuipuzcoaCastileLeon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costume. Each mural celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by July 1919.
Sorolla suffered a stroke in 1920, while painting a portrait in his garden in Madrid. Paralyzed for over three years, he died on 10 August 1923. He is buried in the Cementeri de Valencia, Spain.

The Sorolla Room, housing the Provinces of Spain at the Hispanic Society of America, opened to the public in 1926. The room closed for remodeling in 2008, and the murals toured museums in Spain for the first time. The Sorolla Room reopened in 2010, with the murals on permanent display.
Sorolla's work is represented in museums throughout Spain, Europe, America, and in many private collections in Europe and America. In 1933, J. Paul Getty purchased ten Impressionist beach scenes made by Sorolla, several of which are now housed in the J. Paul Getty Museum.
In 2007 many of his works were exhibited at the Petit Palais in Paris, alongside those of John Singer Sargent, a contemporary who painted in a similarly impressionist-influenced manner. In 2009, there was a special exhibition of his works at the Prado in Madrid, and in 2010, the exhibition visited the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in CuritibaBrazil.
From 5 December 2011 to 10 March 2012, several of Sorolla's works were exhibited in Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, in New York. This exhibition included pieces used during Sorolla's eight-year research for The Vision of Spain.