CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924)
Adam Peak (2,243 m - 7360 ft)
Sri Lanka
In Adam's Peak in Ceylon, 1873, watercolor heightened with white and gum arabic 58.7 x 80.5 cm. Private collection
Adam Peak (2,243 m - 7360 ft) called in singhalese Sri Pada or Samanala, is one of the most important summits of the island of Sri Lanka. Conical, it is considered a holy place by Shaivite Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims.
It is located southwest of the island in Ratnapura district, about 40 kilometers north-east of Ratnapura. The small town of Nuwara Eliya, in the neighboring district, is often used as a base for its ascent.
Hindu pilgrims climb the thousands of steps that lead to the summit so as to reach for the sunrise and see the triangular shape of its shadow sweep the surrounding countryside. This climb lasts several hours and is usually done in April.
At the summit of the mountain is found, hollowed out in the rock, a cavity of almost two meters, supposed to be a footprint. Hindus see the trace of the passage of Vishnu or Shiva. For Muslims it is the footprint of Adam's foot, when he left the Garden of Eden, whose island of Ceylon is very symbolically close, and fell on Earth, which explains the name given to the mountain. For Buddhists it is the footprint of Buddha, and there are other origins, which attribute the imprint to Shiva or even to St. Thomas.
Ibn Battuta is the first author to record his rise, in the fourteenth century, he confirms the presence of iron chains installed as a handrail and which had been described by Marco Polo.
The peak of Adam is however not the highest point of the island, which is Mount Pidurutalagala, with 2,524 m.
The painter
Constance Frederica “Eka” Gordon-Cumming was a noted Scottish travel writer and painter. Born in a wealthy family, she travelled around the world and painted described scenes and life as she saw them.
Constance Gordon-Cumming was a prolific landscape painter, mostly in Asia and the Pacific. She painted over a thousand watercolors and worked with a motto to ‘never a day without at least one careful-coloured sketch’ starting her day at 5 am while in India. Places she visited include Australia, New Zealand, America, China, and Japan.
She arrived in Hilo, Hawaii in October 1879, and was among the first artists to paint the active volcanoes. Her Hawaii travelogue, Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii, was published in Edinburgh in 1883. She had several dangerous moments but her travel ended in 1880 when the Montana that she was on ran into rocks at Holyhead. While most of the passengers took the lifeboat, she stayed on last along with the captain to save her paintings and was rescued many hours later. She returned to live at Crieff with her widowed sister Eleanor and continued to write books.
Her best known books are At Home in Fiji and A Lady's Cruise on a French Man-of-War. The latter book resulted from an invitation to join a French ship put into service for the Bishop of Samoa so that he could visit remote parts of his far-flung diocese.
Miss Gordon-Cumming received much criticism from male writers of the era, perhaps because she did not fit in the traditional Victorian role of women, as she often traveled alone and unaided.
In any case, her landscape drawings and watercolors seem to be universally admired.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
