LE PRABÉ PAINTED BY EDOUARD VALLET

 

ÉDOUARD VALLET (1876-1929)
Le Prabé (2, 042m -  6,699ft)
Switzerland (Valais)

In "Savièse in Valais (Morning in the mountains)", oil on canvas, 1912, Private collection

The mountain 

Le Prabé (2, 042m -  6,699ft) is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Savièse in the canton of Valais. It lies at the southern end of the ridge that descends from the Wildhorn and the Sex Noir. Although the Prabé has almost no topographic prominence, it dominates the Rhone valley with a height of more than 1,500 metres.

The Painter
Édouard Eugène Francis Vallet (1876 -1929) was a Swiss artist. Born in Geneva he went to a boarding school in France and apprenticed as a stonemason in 1892. He then went to the Geneva College of Fine Arts and studied woodcuts under Alfred Martin, Pierre Pignolat and Barthélemy Menn. He also travelled to Germany and Italy and held his first exhibition in 1899. He lived in the Swiss mountains in Valais, Savièse, Ayent, Hérémence, Vercorin and Sion from 1908 and painted portraits and landscapes from the region. He married the painter Marguerite Gilliard, daughter of the artist Eugène Gilliard (1861-1921) and after her death in 1918, he married Marie Jollien (1886-1951). Vallet died in 1929 and is buried in the cemetery at Confignon.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

DENTS DU MIDI PAINTED BY FREDERIC ROUGE

FREDERIC ROUGE (1867-1950)

The Dents du Midi  (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to10,685 ft) 

Switzerland

 In Les Les-Dents du Midi en hiver, 1906, Huile sur toile, Fondation Frédéric Rouge

The painter
Frederic Rouge was born in Aigle (Switzerland), on 27 April 1867. His parents owned a small shoe factory. After school, he attended the Fine Arts College in Basel for a year, coming first of his class at the end of the course. Then, after a while studying with the history painter Vigier, he came back home to live with his parents. To perfect his technique, the artist spent three consecutive winters at the Julian Academy in Paris "where Professor Boulanger, exacting and irascible, was hard to please". In 1903, Frederic Rouge settled in Ollon, not far from Aigle, in a pleasant house called "The Cedars". Today Ollon is still a large village surrounded by orchards and vineyards bathed in sunshine, its dense forests teeming with wildlife, and where the Alpine scenery reigns supreme.
He wholeheartedly loved this region which provided him with so many subjects of inspiration, and whose every season, scene and mood he rendered so faithfully.
Frederic Rouge was suffering from paralysis when he died on 13 February 1950. All his life he had remained unassuming, an honest man and a great artist, true to his ideals, a citizen devoted to the cause of liberty - perhaps not the best way to make one's fortune, even for a painter of talent !

The mountains
The Dents du Midi (Teeth of the south) (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to10,685 ft) are mountain range, 3 kilometers long, located in the Chablais Alps in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Overlooking the valley of Illiez and Rhône Valley on south, they face the lake Salanfe, an artificial reservoir, and are part of the geological whole massif Giffre.
The name "Dents du Midi" is recent. The people formerly called them "Dents Tsallen". It was only towards the end of the19e century that the name "Dents du Midi" came officially.
Each « tooth » had several names over the centuries and according to its geological evolution.
- The "Cime de l'Est" (3,178 meters) called "Mont Novierre" before the mid-17th century, and "Mont Saint-Michel "after landslides in 1635 and 1636 and finally "Dent Noire" (until the 19th century).
- The "Dent Jaune" (3,186 m) was called the "Dent Rouge" until 1879.
- The "Doigt de Champéry" (in 1882) and then the Doigt Salanfe (in 1886) turned just into "Les Doigts" (Fingers) (3,205 m and 3210 m).
- The "Haute Cime" (3,257 m) also had many names : "Dent de L’ouest" (until 1784)an then "Dent du Midi", "Dent de Tsallen" and "Dent de Challent."
- As for l’Eperon (3,114 m) (The Spur), it is assumed that there were two peaks but a landslide in the Middle Ages significantly changed its crest.
- The Forteresse (3,164 m) and the Cathedral (3,160 m) have not changed names.
The evolution of this massif continues nowadays. So on the morning of 30 October 2006, a volume of 1 million m3 of rock broke away from the edge of the Haute Cime and slid down the slope to an altitude of about 3000 m. The event did not present danger to the nearby village of Val-d'Illiez but roads and trails were closed for security reasons. According to the cantonal geologist, the landslide was caused by the thawing of rocks, helped by warm summers of recent years. 

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE DOM AND THE TÄSCHORN PAINTED BY W. F. BURGER

WILHELM FRIEDRICH BURGER (1882 -1964)
The Dom (4,545 m (14,911 ft)
The Täschhorn (4,491 m -14,734 ft)
Switzerland

In The Dom and Täschhorn above Zermatt, watercolour, 30.5 x 37.5 cm.
Courtesy John Mitchell Fine Arts London

 
The mountains
The Dom (4 ,545 m  -14,911 ft)  is a mountain of the Pennine Alps, located between Randa and Saas-Fee in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It is the seventh highest summit in the Alps, overall.  Based on prominence, it can be regarded as the third highest mountain in the Alps, and the second highest in Switzerland, after Monte Rosa. The Dom is the main summit of the Mischabel group (German: Mischabelhörner), which is the highest massif lying entirely in Switzerland. The Dom is noteworthy for its 'normal route' of ascent having the greatest vertical height gain of all the alpine 4000 metre peaks, and none of that route's 3,100 metres of height can be achieved using mechanical means. Although Dom is a German cognate for 'dome', it can also mean 'cathedral' and the mountain is named after Canon Berchtold of Sitten cathedral, the first person to survey the vicinity. The former name Mischabel comes from an ancient German dialect term for pitchfork, as the highest peaks of the massif stand close to each other.
The Täschhorn (4,491 m - 14,734 ft) is  lying south of the Dom within the Mischabel range.  Täschorn is a little lower than Dom but more difficult to access because there is mandatory rock climbing. Täschorn is a 3 sides pyramid.  East face is above Saas Fee, W face is above Täsch (last village before Zermatt), and huge South face is above Täschalp (Ottavan).  Each side belongs a glacier: on Täsch side is Kingletscher, on Ottavan side is Weingartengletscher, on Saas side is Feegletscher. The first ascent of the mountain was by John Llewelyn Davies and J. W. Hayward with guides Stefan and Johann Zumtaugwald and Peter-Josef Summermatter on 30 July 1862. The normal route is on the SE ridge starting from Mischabeljoch. To join the Mischabel pass, it's possible to come from either Saas Fee side or Täsch side.

 
The painter
Wilhelm, or Willy, Burger is nowadays widely recognized as one of the leading graphic artists of his time. His lithograph posters such as, Jungfraubahn. Station Jungfrau: Joch 3457m. Aletschgletscher, 1914 and St. Moritz, 1912are far better known – and more costly – than his oil paintings. However, he was first and foremost a painter by training who apprenticed in Zurich before leaving for Philadelphia and New York in 1908. He returned to Switzerland in 1913 where he set up a studio in Rüschlikon on the west shore of Lake Zürich from where he would travel throughout the Alps, the Mediterranean and as far afield as Egypt for his commissions. Although Burger cannot be categorized as a Symbolist in the strictest sense, his palette, his penchant for jagged outlines and his ethereal skies owe much to Ferdinand Hodler, the leading Swiss painter of the late nineteenth century. Hovering between Realism and Symbolism in style, this late afternoon view over the Zürichsee from the edge of the lake at Rüschlikon is an overt homage to Hodler who painted nearly 150 pictures of the Swiss lakes, many of them in a similar, panoramic format. Burger went so far as to sign his picture with a more spidery signature than usual – a pastiche of Hodler’s.
From 1901 onwards, Hodler began to concentrate on a series of acclaimed visions of Lac Léman (Geneva) in which he delineated horizontal bands of differing colours and tone. As he developed the theme of receding lines across the lake, or ‘parallelism’, as he called it, Mont Blanc and its surrounding peaks were introduced into the background. Hodler died in 1918 but in these late paintings he sought to express his concept of unité – the idea that there was a fundamental order to the universe and the artist’s role was to reveal it.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE SIMPLON PASS BY ANONYMOUS FRENCH PAINTER

 ANONYMOUS FRENCH PAINTER
Col du Simplon (2,005 m - 6,578 ft)
Switzerland

In  "Le passage des Alpes par l'armée napoléonienne",   Huile sur toile, non rentoilée, ca. 1806,            64,5 x 77 cm  Private collection  

 
About the painting
This historical painting tells how and above all where the army of Napoleon 1st crossed the Alps to enter Italy, at the Simplon Pass (Col du Simplon). The road was built between 1801 and 1805 by the engineer Nicolas Céard, on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte who wanted to open a passage for his artillery (described above); the cost was more than 8 million francs.  It was also Napoleon who, on February 21, 1801, without even consulting the canons of Saint-Bernard, decided to create a hospice in every way similar to that of the Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard, of which he had a lot appreciated the usefulness.  When Napoleon fell, only the first floor had been built. The building remained as it was until the mid-1820s, when work resumed and was completed in 1831.

The mountain pass
The Col du Simplon (2,005 m - 6,578 ft) (Simplon Pass in english) is a high mountain pass between the Pennine Alps and the Lepontine Alps in Switzerland. It connects Brig in the canton of Valais with Domodossola in Piedmont (Italy). The pass itself and the villages on each side of it, such as Gondo, are in Switzerland. The Simplon Tunnel was built beneath the vicinity of the pass in the early 20th century to carry rail traffic between the two countries.
The lowest point of the col (pass) and the lowest point on the watershed between the basins of the Rhone and the Po in Switzerland lies in marshland about 500 m - 1,640 ft west of the Simplon Pass settlement at an altitude of 1,994 m - 6,542 ft.
Rotelsee is a lake located near the pass at an elevation of 2,028 m (6,654 ft).
There are several great peaks around that can be climbed directly from the pass. These include Wasenhorn, Hubschhorn, Breithorn (Simplon), and Monte Leone.

The French school of painting in the 19th century
This term designates artworks produced in 19th-century France that reflects the teachings of the École des Beaux-Arts, the Parisian state-sponsored art academy.  Prioritizing draftsmanship over painting, the school taught students to employ fine line work and soft, blended shading in their drawings. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s drawings, epitomize the Academic style, which is characterized by close attention to detail, near-invisible brushstrokes, and an emphasis on realistic modeling and shading. Academic painters often depicted scenes from history, literature, the Bible, or classical mythology, although this style can also be seen in pastoral scenes.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LE GRAND COMBIN PAINTED BY GUSTAVE DORÉ

GUSTAVE DORÉ (1832-1883)
Le Grand Combin (4,314 m- 14, 154ft)
Switzerland

In Le Grand Combin, Suisse romande, Oil on panel,  26 x 35 cm. Private collection (Christies)

The mountain
The Grand Combin is a mountain massif in the western Pennine Alps in Switzerland. With its 4,314 metres (14,154 ft) highest summit, the Combin de Grafeneire, it is one of the highest peaks in the Alps and the second most prominent of its range. The Grand Combin is also a large glaciated massif consisting of several summits, among which three are above 4000 metres:
- Combin de Grafeneire (4,314 m -14,154 ft),
- Combin de Valsorey (4,183 m -13,724 ft),
- Combin de la Tsessette (4,134 m -13,563 ft).
The massif of the Grand Combin lies south of Verbier between the Val d'Entremont (west) and Val de Bagnes (west). The north-western facing side of Grand Combin is entirely covered by eternal snows and glaciers which are prone to serac falls. The southern and eastern walls are more steep and thus exempt of snow.
The topography of the Grand Combin is intricate. Between the Val d'Entremont and the Val de Bagnes are two high ridges, nearly parallel to each other and to those valleys, which both diverge from a short transverse ridge of great height. The southern end of the space enclosed between these three ridges is an elevated plateau of great extent, where the snows accumulate and feed the Corbassière Glacier which descends thence for about ten kilometers to the north. The glacier is surrounded by the peaks of Petit Combin, Combin de Corbassière and Combin de Boveire on the west, Grand Tavé and Tournelon Blanc on the east. Smaller glaciers lie on the external flanks such as Boveire and Mont Durand Glacier.
The Grand Combin, which yields in height to only a few European mountains, was long one of the least known of Alpine summits. The first to commence the exploration of the great massif which separates the Val de Bagnes from the Val d'Entremont was Gottlieb Samuel Studer, of Berne, who on August 14, 1851 reached for the first time the summit of the Combin de Corbassière with the guide Joseph-Benjamin Fellay, and has published an account of that and a subsequent excursion in Bergund Gletscher-Fahrten. He was followed in that ascent five years later by W. and C. E. Mathews, and in 1857, William Mathews anticipated Studer in the ascent of the second peak of the Grand Combin.
The first four expeditions on Grand Combin reached only the minor summit east of Grand Combin (Aiguille du Croissant). The first one was made by mountain guides from the valley (Maurice Fellay and Jouvence Bruchez) on July 20, 1857. The first complete ascent of Grand Combin was finally made on July 30, 1859 by Charles Sainte-Claire Deville with Daniel, Emmanuel and Gaspard Balleys, and Basile Dorsaz.
The Grand Combin de Valsorey on the west was reached for the first time on 16 September 1872 by J. H. Isler and J. Gillioz. They climbed the south south face above the Plateau du Couloir. The itinerary on the south-east ridge was opened on 10 September 1891 by O. Glynne Jones, A.Bovier and P. Gaspoz.
The "Penitents", those reliefs of ice that one see rising on the surface of the glacier of the Grand Combin, in this 1787 painting, have all disappeared at the beginning of 21th century, because of global warming...


The painter
Paul-Gustave-Louis-Christophe Doré said Gustave Doré, born January 6, 1832 in Strasbourg and died January 23, 1883 in Paris in his house in the rue Saint-Dominique, is an illustrator, writer, cartoonist, painter and French sculptor. It has been internationally recognized in his lifetime.
In 1851, two albums Three artists misunderstood and unhappy and Des-approval for a pleasure trip are published at Aubert. Freed from the inspiration of Rudolf Töppfer and compliance executives, Gustave Doré performs freely arranged vignettes with several dimensions. The plurality of page composition, its innovations and graphic variants are deployed mainly in Des-approval for a pleasure trip. His technique uses the lithographic pencil, drawing directly on the stone.
Paul Lafon, writer and editor, he had met with Philipon, agreed to his request to illustrate the works of Rabelais. In 1854, the book is published by Bry with 99 vignettes and 14 inset plates engraved on wood. This affordable edition with low printing quality and modest size (large octavo) is not up to the high ambitions of Gustave Doré. In 1854 and 1873 shows two versions of "Rabelais Works" and in 1855: The Hundred Tales of comical by Honoré de Balzac.
In 1856 he illustrates with a painter's hand, The Wandering Jew, a poem set to music by Pierre Dupont, a work break in his artistic career and in the history of the woodcut. Abandoning copper engraving usually privileged, Gustave Doré chooses the color of wood technical (interpretation etching). Doré formed its own school burners. Each plank of the work, with a short caption end of the poem is a work of painting. The large format of the book allows the transition to movies folio. The image is independent of the text. This work is having great success with the public.
Gustave Doré wants to deploy his talent in illustration of the great works of literature, with contempt observed towards caricature and drawing current. It will list the thirty masterpieces in the epic, comic or tragic his ideal library wishing illustrate them in the same format as the Wandering Jew, Dante's Inferno, the Tales by Perrault, Don Quixote, Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Milton (The lost paradise) or Shakespeare ... The publishers refuse to perform these luxury publications of too much cost. Gustave Doré should self-publish the works of Dante in 1861. The critical and popular success hails striking prints on the text. A critic will assert that: "The author is crushed by the designer. More than Dante illustrated by Doré, Doré is illustrated by Dante. "
In the 1860s, he illustrated the Bible.
He attended high society and expands his pictorial activities it consists of large paintings like Dante and Virgil in the ninth circle of Hell (1861 - 311 × 428 cm - Musée de Brou), The Enigma (Musée d'Orsay ) or the Christ leaving court (1867-1872 - 600 × 900 cm² Museum of modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg).
According to Ray Harryhausen, famous designer of special effects, multiplying together drawings and illustrations of all kinds (fantastic, portraits-loads), its reputation extends to Europe, he met a huge success in England with the Doré Gallery that opened in London in 1869. In 1875, the figure of Samuel Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Lament of the Ancient Mariner) published in London by Golden Gallery is one of his greatest masterpieces.
His art of composition culminated in London, a Pilgrimage by Blanchard Jerrold, true story about the London of the late nineteenth century when all classes are present, inspiration is particularly striking in the description of the London slums.
He died of a heart attack at age 51 on January 23, 1883, leaving an impressive work of more than ten thousand pieces, which will have later a strong influence on many illustrators. His friend Ferdinand Foch organizes the funeral at St. Clotilde, burial at Père Lachaise and a farewell meal at 73 rue Saint-Dominique

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

DER NIESEN PAINTED BY MARCUS JACOBI

MARCUS JACOBI (1891-1969)
Der Niesen (2, 362m - 7,749ft
Switzerland

In The Niesen, Lake Thun, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, oil on canvas, 105 x 96cm, 1941,
Courtesy John Mitchell Fine paintings, London 

The mountain
The Niesen (2, 362m - 7,749ft) is a mountain of the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. It overlooks Lake Thun, in the Bernese Oberland region, and forms the northern end of a ridge that stretches north from the Albristhorn and Mannliflue, separating the Simmental and Kandertal valleys. The literal translation of the German word "Niesen" is "sneeze", but the Niesen because of its shape, is often called The Swiss Pyramid. Administratively, the summit is shared between the municipalities of Reichenbach im Kandertal, to the south-east, and Wimmis, to the west and north. Both municipalities are in the canton of Bern. The summit of the mountain can be reached easily by using the Niesenbahn funicular from Mülenen (near Reichenbach). The construction of the funicular was completed in 1910. Alongside the path of the Niesenbahn is the longest stairway in the world with 11,674 steps. It is open only once a year to the public for a stair run.
The literal translation of the German word Niesen is sneeze. Because of its shape, the Niesen is often called the Swiss Pyramid. Since the 18th century, the Niesen was the subject of a number of paintings which will all be published in this blog, one by one. The Ferdinand Holder's paintings are the two first ones to have been published. The Niesen was also the subject of a number of paintings by Paul Klee, in which it was represented as a quasi-pyramid.

The painter
Born in Biel, Marcus Jacobi came from a family of piano manufacturers and went to study medicine in Bern before becoming a painter. In the 1920s he moved to Merligen on the northern shore of Lake Thun from where this summer panorama was painted. Floating between Ferdinand Hodler and Felix Vallotton, two of the giants of Swiss twentieth century painting, Jacobi’s landscape style fused elements of Realism and Symbolism. He became known for his views of the Niesen, the volcano-like peak which rises to well over 2,000 metres and is one of Switzerland’s most iconic mountains.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE TORRENTHORN IN VINTAGE POSTCARDS 1890

  

VINTAGE POSTCARDS
The Torrenthorn (2,997 m - 9,832 ft)
Switzerland (Valais)


In  "La Suisse en couleurs : Le village de Leukerbad et le Torrenthorn, Valais", Carte postale 1890

The mountain
The Torrenthorn (2,997 m - 9,832 ft) is a summit of t he Bernese Alps, in Switzerland, located in the canton of Valais,  It is located southwest of the Majinghorn. Its western slope is part of the Loèche-les-Bains ski area, of which it overlooks the village, located to the west. The Bernese Alps are a mountain range of the Alps, located in western Switzerland.  Although the name suggests that they are located in the Berner Oberland region of the canton of Bern, portions of the Bernese Alps are in the adjacent cantons of Valais, Fribourg and Vaud, the latter being usually named Fribourg Alpsand Vaud Alps respectively. The highest mountain in the range, the Finsteraarhorn, is also the highest point in the canton of Bern. The Rhône valley separates them from the Chablais Alps in the west and from the Pennine Alps in the south; the upper Rhône valley separates them from the Lepontine Alps to the southeast; the Grimsel Pass and the Aare valley separates them from the Uri Alps in the east, and from the Emmental Alps in the north; their northwestern edge is not well defined, describing a line roughly from Lake Geneva to Lake Thun. The Bernese Alps are drained by the river Aare and its tributary the Saane in the north, the Rhône in the south, and the Reuss in the east.


Vintage postcards
Postcards were colorized as soon as they appeared on the market  at the end of 19th century ; the photos were then repainted by hand by women with very fine brushes, then a varnish was applied to fix these colors which were always very contrasting... and sometimes very far from reality!
Postcards became popular at the turn of the 20th century, especially for sending short messages to friends and relatives. They were collected right from the start, and are still sought after today by collectors of pop culture, photography, advertising, wartime memorabilia, local history, and many other categories. Postcards were an international craze, published all over the world. The Detroit Publishing Co. and Teich & Co. were two of the major publishers in the U.S, and sometimes individuals printed their own postcards as well. Yvon were the most famous in France. Many individual or anonymous publishers did exist around the world and especially in Africa and Asia (Japan, Thailand, Nepal, China, Java) between 1920 and 1955. These photographer were mostly local notables, soldiers, official guides belonging to the colonial armies (british french, belgium...) who sometimes had rather sophisticated equipment and readily produced colored photograms or explorers, navigators, climbers (Vittorio Sella and the Archiduke of Abruzzi future king of Italy remains the most famous of them).
There are many types of collectible vintage postcards.
Hold-to-light postcards were made with tissue paper surrounded by two pieces of regular paper, so light would shine through. Fold-out postcards, popular in the 1950s, had multiple postcards attached in a long strip. Real photograph postcards (RPPCs) are photographs with a postcard backing.
Novelty postcards were made using wood, aluminum, copper, and cork. Silk postcards–often embroidered over a printed image–were wrapped around cardboard and sent in see-through glassine paper envelopes; they were especially popular during World War I.
In the 1930s and 1940s, postcards were printed on brightly colored paper designed to look like linen.
Most vintage postcard collectors focus on themes, like Christmas, Halloween, portraits of movie stars, European royalty and U.S. presidents, wartime imagery, and photos of natural disasters or natural wonders. Not to mention cards featuring colorful pictures by famous artists like Alphonse Mucha, Harrison Fisher, Ellen Clapsaddle, and Frances Brundage.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

 

THE GRINDELWALD GLACIER PAINTED BY THOMAS FEARNLEY

 

THOMAS FEARNLEY  (1802-1842)
The Grindelwald Glacier  (1, 349 m - 4, 425m)
Switzerland (Bernese Alps)

 In The Grindelwald Glacier, oil on canvas  1838, 194 x 157 cm, Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

About the painting
In The Grindelwaldgletscher, the highlight of Thomas Fearnley’s Swiss landscape paintings, the viewer gazes up from the grassy knoll in the foreground toward the bottom of a valley filled by a glacier. The majestic composition is based on Fearnley’s on-site observations. A sketch in pencil from August 1835 reveals a barren landscape in front of the glacier. The large trees, which form such an essential part of the picture’s overall composition, stem from studies of trees Fearnley made a week later in Scheideck. Fearnley has made the landscape more overpowering than in the original on-site drawing. The mountainsides are steeper and have been accentuated through light and shadow. The contrast to the everlasting ice and snow of the desolate valley is heightened by the lush vegetation in the foreground, where sheep graze under a shepherd’s supervision. Fearnley emphasizes the wild, inaccessible aspects of nature by letting a bird of prey glide above the glacier, even as he playfully includes a visual, English-based pun on his name by adding a tuft of fern next to his signature.
Scholars have noted how the composition and the balancing of the various landscape elements evoke the Düsseldorf painter Johann Wilhelm Schirmer (1807–63), whom Fearnley met during his sojourn in Switzerland. In romanticism, a pronounced contrast between warm and cold tones, as seen here, was also perceived as symbolizing the confrontation between life and death. Before the painting was completed, it was shown at the Paris Salon in 1836. Along with two paintings by J. C. Dahl, this painting and Fearnley’s The Labro Falls at Kongsberg (1837) were the first paintings by Norwegians artists to be acquired by the National Gallery.

The glacier
The Lower Grindelwald Glacier also known as the Lower Grindelwald Glacier is a glacier in the Bernese Alps, located southeast of Grindelwald, in the canton of Bern (Swiss). It originates under the Agassizhorn and the Strahlegghorn and is connected to the Unteraar glacier via the Finsteraarjoch (3,283 m). The Lower Grindelwald Glacier should not be confused with the Upper Grindelwald Glacier, located to the northeast. The Lower Grindelwald Glacier still has a major tributary, the Ischmeer (“sea of ​​ice” in Swiss German, formerly known as the “Grielwald-Fiescher Glacier”, German: Grindelwald-Fieschergletscher3), which is the glacier overlooked by the Eismeer station of the Jungfrau Railway.
The Lower Grindelwald Glacier was 8.3 km long and covered an area of ​​20.8 km2 in 1973. It has shrunk considerably since, being only 6.2 km long in 2015, the 1.9 km retreat being mainly intervened since 2007. In the middle of the 19th century, the glacier reached the valley of Grindelwald as far as Mettenberg, at an altitude of 983 m, near the confluence of the white Lütschine and the black Lütschine. In 1900 it still extended to the Rotenflue (1,200 m) and filled the whole valley from its present end, the glacial lake, with a thickness of about 300 m up to an altitude of 1,700 m, just below the current hiking trail around the Bänisegg. In the early 2000s, it had retreated to the gorge between the Hörnli (Eiger) ridge and the Mättenberg. 

The painter
Thomas Fearnley attended National Cadet Corps from 1814 to 1819. He was a student of the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry (1819–1821), Art Academy in Copenhagen (1821–1823) and the Art Academy (n Stockholm (1823–27) under Carl Johan Fahlcrantz. Fearnley left Copenhagen bound for Stockholm in the autumn of 1823 to complete a painting commissioned by Crown Prince Oscar of Norway and Sweden. He received several orders from the Swedish royal family and from other members of the royal court including Swedish Count Gustaf Trolle-Bonde. He conducted study tours in Norway (1824-1826), at which time he met Johan Christian Dahl in Sogn. After another stay in Copenhagen from 1827 to 1828 and a new Norwegian trip in the autumn of 1828, he went to Germany and was a student of Dahl in Dresden (1829–1830) as well as befriending the German painter Joseph Petzl and the German-Danish painter Friedrich Bernhard Westphal. He lived in Munich (1830–32). Fearnley traveled extensively in the 1830s, visiting Munich, Paris, London, Hull and the English Lake district. During September 1832, he went from Venice to Rome and visited Sicily the following summer. He mostly painted in small towns south of Naples: Castellammare, Amalfi, Sorrento, Capri and in Switzerland: Meiringen, Grindelwald. He went to Paris in the summer of 1835 and visited London the next year. During the summer of 1839 he was on a study tour to the Sognefjord and Hardangerfjord, together with the German painter Andreas Achenbach. Fearnley's paintings alternate between oil sketches and larger, composed landscapes meant for exhibition. His large studio compositions have a cool monumental attitude with a taste for the powerful and wildly romantic in the favorite motifs, wilderness and waterfalls, and with a strong emphasis on the image's architectural structure. The National Gallery in Oslo owns a total of 54 of his smaller pictures and sketches and also a series of drawings. Notable works in this collection include Labrofossen (1837), Grindelwaldgletsjeren (1838) and Slinde Birken (1839). Other notable collections are located in the Bergen Kunstmuseum and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

PIZ BALZET, PUNTA DE L'ALBIGNA, SPAZZACALDEIRA BY GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI

GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI (1868-1933)
Piz Balzet (2, 869 m - 9,413 ft)
Punta de l'Albigna (2,825 m - 9,268 ft)
Spazzacaldeira (2,487 m- 8,159 ft)
Switzerland
 In  Albigna Valley, oil on canvas,  1932

The Mountains 

The Piz Balzet  (2, 869 m - 9,413 ft)  is a  tall granite mountain located in Bergell, Switzerland. Standing just on the eastern edge of the Albigna reservoir it is clearly visible when driving down from the Maloja-pass to the north and from the campsite at Vicosoprano. Seen from this (its western) side the Balzet is an imposing picture; very steep slabs fall off into the valley and several ridges make their way to the well defined summit. A different picture entirely is presented when the mountain is viewed from its southern side; from this side there are no steep drops to valley floors far below. Instead, it is 'merely' a summit in the ridge leading up to the Piz Bacun (3,244m).
The Punta da l'Albigna  (2,825 m - 9,268 ft) is an easily recognizable summit on the eastern side of the Albigna lake in the Bergell, an area in south-eastern Switzerland famous for its multitude of alpine rock climbs on excellent granite. Along with the Spazzacaldeira and the Piz Balzet, the Punta da l'Albigna ranks among the most popular climbing hotspots in the Albigna area. It hosts numerous routes from 4a to 5c and varying in length between 8 and 12 ropelengths. Most of the routes are bolted, though some rather sparingly
Spazzacaldeira (2,487 m- 8,159 ft) is the name of the ridge directly west of the Albigna reservoir, just to the north of the Al Gal. It offers a multitude of alpine-sport routes across its eastern face and the north-east ridge is a well known classic in the area. Because of the generally well bolted nature of the routes and the incredibly easy access via the nearby cable car station, Spazzacaldeira can attract a large number of climbers. Most of them will be aiming for the summit pinnacle, the famous Fiamma, a striking summit spire seen on many local postcards.

The painter
Giovanni Giacometti was a Swiss painter, the father of the famous painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and of Diego Giacometti, the furniture designer as well as the father of the architect Bruno Giacometti ! In 1886, he studied painting at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich, where he met Cuno Amiet the following year. Both decide to pursue their studies in Paris, in October stood at the Académie Julian, where Giacometti remains until 1891.
In 1893, shortly after his return to Switzerland, to Bergell, he became friends with Giovanni Segantini, his eldest ten years, which has great influence on his work by opening it to the beauty of the mountain scenery and the rules of divisionism. After his sudden death in 1899, Giacometti met Ferdinand Hodler, who teaches him to create a rigorous and ornamental composition by appropriate use of shapes and colors.
He sees regularly Cuno Amiet, who after a year spent in Pont-Aven, shared his experience with him. In 1900 he exhibited in the Swiss Pavillon of the Universal Exhibition in Paris. From 1905, Giacometti works again in a great complicity with Amiet and begins to break free from the influence of Segantini. In 1906, held an exhibition of his work at Kunstlerhaus Zurich. In 1907 he went to Paris with Amiet to the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. They copy all the works of Van Gogh. In 1908, he exhibited with the French Fauves at the Richter Gallery in Dresden.
In 1909, the Tannhauser Gallery presents his works in Munich. He meets Alexi von Jawlensky, and in 1911 participates in the Berlin Secession. In 1912, Giacometti has a solo show at the Kunsthaus Zurich presents two works in the Sonderbund of Cologne. In 1918 after Hodler' s death, he began to be involved into the Swiss political world paying an important part as a committed artist, following int that way friend Amiet.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE CERVIN / MATTERHORN PAINTED BY GABRIEL LOPPÉ

GABRIEL LOPPÉ (1825-1913)
Le Cervin or Matterhorn (4,478m -14,691ft)
Switzerland - Italy border

In "Le Mont Cervin par temps nuageux, l'après midi", étude, huile sur toile 29x 18, 5cm, 1884.

The mountain

The Mont Cervin (4,478m -14,691ft) also known as the Matterhorn is an alpine summit located on the Swiss-Italian border between the canton of Valais and the Aosta Valley in Switzerland. It has several other names: Cervino in Italian, Grand'Bèca in Arpitan, Matterhorn in German. The Cervin / Matterhorn is the most famous mountain in Switzerland, including the pyramidal shape that it offers from the village of Zermatt, in the German-speaking part of the canton of Valais.
Its four sides are joined about 400 meters below the summit in a summit pyramid, called "roof." Its summit is a broad ridge about two meters, on which stand actually two summits: one called "Swiss summit," the farther east, and the "Italian summit" slightly lower (4,476 meters), on the west side of the ridge. The two are separated by a notch in the hollow of which a cross was laid in September 1901.
Its north face is one of the three great north faces of the Alps with the Eiger and the Grandes Jorasses.
The most famous faces of the Matterhorn are the faces east and north, seen from Zermatt. The first
1, 000 meters high, has great risk of falling rocks, which makes it dangerous climb. The north face high of 1100 meters, is one of the most dangerous sides of the Alps, particularly because of the risks of landslides and storms. The south side, overlooking the Breuil (Valtournenche above) is high, it, 1 350 meters. This is the face that offers the most channels. And finally, the west face the highest with its 1400 meters, is the one that is the subject of fewer climbs attempts. Between the west side and the north side there is also the north-northwest side, which does not stretch to the summit but stopped Zmutt Nose, on the bridge of the same name. This is the most dangerous route for climbing the Matterhorn. There is also a south-facing southeast, deemed to be the most difficult of the south face route, which leads to the Pic Muzio, on Furggen Shoulder.
Due to its pyramidal form, the Matterhorn has four main ridges, through which pass most of climbing routes. The easiest ridge, that borrows the normal route, is the Hörnli ridge (Hörnligrat in German): it is between the faces east and north, facing the Zermatt valley. Further west lies the Zmutt ridge (Zmuttgrat), between the north and west sides. Between the western and southern sides is the Lion ridge (Liongrat), also known as Italian ridge, which passes through the Tyndall peak, summit of the southern part of the west side, at which begins the upper face. Finally, the south side is separated from the face is Furggen
Swiss normal route from the cabin of the Hörnli, located at 3260 meters. Since Zermatt is accessed by gondola Schwarzsee; there are 700 vertical meters to the hut and 1200 vertical meters to the summit.
Difficulty (Hörnli ridge): AD (fairly difficult), 3 climbing passage; fixed ropes were installed near the top for easy ascension.
The Italian normal route, taking his departure in Breuil, follows almost entirely the southwest ridge, called the Lion ridge. It was inaugurated by the guide valtournain Jean-Antoine Carrel 17 July 1865.
The climb from the Italian side includes three steps:
- du Breuil (2012 meters) at the shelter Duke of Abruzzi in Oriondé (2802 meters)
- the refuge Duca degli Abruzzi refuge to Jean-Antoine Carrel (3830 meters)
- Jean-Antoine Carrel refuge at the summit (4478 meters).
The ascent by Hörnli ridge, July 14, 1865, was considered the last of the great feats of mountaineering in the Alps. But this ascent error ended at the beginning of the descent, in the death of 4 of the 7 members of the roped Victorieuse.

The painter
Toussaint Gabriel Loppé was a French painter, photographer and mountaineer. He became the first foreigner to be made a member of the Alpine Club in London. His father was a captain in the French Engineers and Loppé's childhood was spent in many different towns in south-eastern France. Aged twenty-one Loppé climbed a small mountain in the Languedoc and found a group of painters sketching on the summit. He had found his calling and subsequently went off to Geneva where he met the reputed leading Swiss landscapist, Alexandre Calame (1810 -1864). Loppé took up mountaineering in Grindelwald in the 1850s and made friends easily with the many English climbers in France and Switzerland. Although he was frequently labelled as a pupil of Calame and his rival François Diday, Loppé was almost an entirely self-taught artist. He became the first painter to work at higher altitudes during climbing expeditions earning the right to be considered the founder of the peintres-alpinistes school, which became established in the Savoie at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Notable followers of Loppé include, Charles Henri Contencin (1875-1955) and Jacques Fourcy (1906-1990). Together with the first ascent of Mt Mallet in Chamonix’s Grandes Jorasses range, Loppé made over 40 ascents of Mont Blanc during his climbing career, which lasted until the late 1890s. He frequently made oil sketches from alpine summits, including a panorama of the view from the summit of Mont Blanc.
His paintings became celebrated for their atmosphere and spontaneity and he soon found himself taking part in many exhibitions in London and in Paris.
By 1896 Loppé had spent over fifty seasons climbing and painting in Chamonix. As the valley’s unrivalled ‘Court painter’ his work was in constant demand with the majority of his pictures going to English climbers and summer tourists.
In his later years, Loppé became fascinated with photography and was quite an innovator in this field too. His long exposure photograph of the Eiffel Tower struck by lightning, now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris remains one of his iconic images.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE EIGER SKETCHED BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT

JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925)
The Eiger (3,970 m -13,020 ft)
Switzerland


In Eiger from Mürren (from Splendid Mountain Watercolours Sketchbook),
Watercolor and graphite, 40.6 x 27.6 cm,
The MET (Gift of Mrs. Francis Ormond, 1950. Public Domain.

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 eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three 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.


The mountain
The Eiger (3,970m- 13,020 ft) is located in the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau at (4,158 m-13,642 ft), constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps. While the northern side of the mountain rises more than 3,000m -10,000 ft above the two valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, the southern side faces the large glaciers of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, the most glaciated region in the Alps. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its 1,800-metre-high - 5,900 ft north face of rock and ice, named Eigerwand or Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. This huge face towers over the resort of Kleine Scheidegg at its base, on the homonymous pass connecting the two valleys.
The first ascent of the Eiger was made by Swiss guides Christian Almer and Peter Bohren and Irishman Charles Barrington, who climbed the west flank on August 11, 1858.
The north face, considered amongst the most challenging and dangerous ascents, was first climbed in 1938 by an Austrian-German expedition with Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vцrg, Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek. The Eiger has been highly-publicized for the many tragedies involving climbing expeditions.
In 1973 : first all female ascent of the face by Wanda Rutkiewicz, Danuta Gellner-Wach and Stefania Egierszdorff. All Polish.
In June 2006, François Bon and Antoine Montant make the first speedflying descent of the Eiger
Since 1935, at least sixty-four climbers have died attempting the north face, earning it the German nickname Mordwand, literally "murder(ous) wall"—a pun on its correct title of Nordwand (North Wall).
Although the summit of the Eiger can be reached by experienced climbers only, a railway tunnel runs inside the mountain, and two internal stations provide easy access to viewing-windows carved into the rock face. They are both part of the Jungfrau Railway line, running from Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch, between the Mцnch and the Jungfrau, at the highest railway station in Europe. The two stations within the Eiger are Eigerwand (behind the north face) and Eismeer (behind the south face), at around 3,000 metres.
The Eiger is mentioned in records dating back to the 13th century, but there is no clear indication of how exactly the peak gained its name. The three mountains of the ridge are commonly referred to as the Virgin (German: Jungfrau – translates to "virgin" or "maiden"), the Monk (Mцnch), and the Ogre (Eiger; the standard German word for ogre is Oger). The name has been linked to the Latin term acer, meaning "sharp" or "pointed", but more commonly to the German eigen, meaning "own".

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE DENTS DU MIDI PAINTED BY JEAN-ANTOINE LINCK

JEAN-ANTOINE LINCK (1766 - 1843)
Les Dents du Midi (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to10,685 ft)
Switzerland

In Vue la Dent du Midi et du Château de Lanex prise près d'Aigle, Original coloured etching, 36 x 48 cm

The mountain
The Dents du Midi (Teeth of the south) (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to 10,685 ft) are a mountain range, 3 kilometers long, located in the Chablais Alps in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Overlooking the valley of Illiez and Rhône Valley on south, they face the lake Salanfe, an artificial reservoir, and are part of the geological whole massif Giffre.
The name "Dents du Midi" is recent. The people formerly called them "Dents Tsallen". It was only towards the end of the19e century that the name "Dents du Midi" came officially.
Each « tooth » had several names over the centuries and according to its geological evolution.
- The "Cime de l'Est" (3,178 meters) called "Mont Novierre" before the mid-17th century, and "Mont Saint-Michel "after landslides in 1635 and 1636 and finally "Dent Noire" (until the 19th century).
- The "Dent Jaune" (3,186 m) was called the "Dent Rouge" until 1879.
- The "Doigt de Champéry" (in 1882) and then the Doigt Salanfe (in 1886) turned just into "Les Doigts" (Fingers) (3,205 m and 3210 m).
- The "Haute Cime" (3,257 m) also had many names : "Dent de l’Ouest" (until 1784) and then "Dent du Midi", "Dent de Tsallen" and "Dent de Challent."
- As for l’Eperon (3,114 m) (The Spur), it is assumed that there were two peaks but a landslide in the Middle Ages significantly changed its crest.
- The Forteresse (3,164 m) and the Cathedral (3,160 m) have not changed names.
The evolution of this massif continues nowadays. So on the morning of 30 October 2006, a volume of 1 million m3 of rock broke away from the edge of the Haute Cime and slid down the slope to an altitude of about 3,000 m. The event did not present danger to the nearby village of Val-d'Illiez but roads and trails were closed for security reasons. According to the cantonal geologist, the landslide was caused by the thawing of rocks, helped by warm summers of recent years.


The artist
Jean-Antoine Linck, is a swiss painter and draftsman who lived and worked at the end of the 18th century and beginning of 19th century, at the time nature and mountains were up to date in high society in Switzerland and France.He is the son of Jean-Conrad, an enameller and engraver from Geneva who initiates his apprenticeship. He was then trained by Carl Hackert with Wolfgang Adam Toepffer. In 1802, he opened his own studio in Geneva, in the district of Montbrillant. His works, depicting the surroundings of Geneva, Savoy, the Alps and the Mont Blanc, were inspired by those of the great master of that " genre" Johann Ludwig Aberli and were successful with Josephine de Beauharnais, the French Empress and Catherine II, the Russian Empress, meanwhile alpine tourism began to develop.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE JUNGFRAU PAINTED BY GIORGIO AVANTI

 

 

GIORGIO AVANTI (c.1946)

Jungfrau (4,158 m - 13, 642 ft) 

Switzerland

 

In Jungfrau 2019, oil on acrylic on canvas, 100 x 120 cm. Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London

The artist
A recognized Swiss author, poet and painter, Peter Studer uses ‘Giorgio Avanti’ as a pseudonym. He lives and works from a studio in Walchwil on the eastern shore of Lake Zug, in the heart of Switzerland.
Avanti’s use of intense colour has earned him the epithet as the colourist of the Alps and a lengthy article published about his life and work that came out in the October and November 2020 edition of Munich’s art magazine, Mundus, was subtitled The Kolorist der Alpen. Drawing parallels with the Polish colourists of the 1930s and 1940s, the closest living counterpart to Avanti is the recently deceased American painter, Wolf Kahn.
Studer was born in Luzern and studied for a career in law before taking up abstract painting in the 1980s. Moving to portraiture and genre scenes a decade later, Studer has spent the latter half of his career concentrating on the Swiss Alps. Mundus’s journalist, Lena Naumann, characterizes Avanti as a twenty-first century disciple of Giovanni Segantini in his interpretation of the Alps whereas the painter would align himself just as closely with the work of Ferdinand Hodler, the leading Swiss painter of the late nineteenth century and Willy Guggenheim, known as Varlin.
Peter Studer refers to his gift for poetry and short stories as ‘painting with words’. His vibrant canvases display their own poetry, one derived entirely from colour.

The mountain
The Jungfrau (4,158 m - 13,642 ft) ("The virgin" in german) is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with the Eiger and Mönch, the Jungfrau forms a massive wall overlooking the Bernese Oberland and the Swiss Plateau, one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps. It is one of the most represented by artists summits with the Matterhorn and the Mont Blanc. The summit was first reached on August 3, 1811 by the Meyer brothers of Aarau and two chamois hunters from Valais. The ascent followed a long expedition over the glaciers and high passes of the Bernese Alps. It was not until 1865 that a more direct route on the northern side was opened. The construction of the Jungfrau railway in the early 20th century, which connects Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch, the saddle between the Mönch and the Jungfrau, made the area one of the most-visited places in the Alps. Along with the Aletsch Glacier to the south, the Jungfrau is part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2001.
Politically, the Jungfrau is split between the municipalities of Lauterbrunnen (Bern) and Fieschertal (Valais). It is the third-highest mountain of the Bernese Alps after the nearby Finsteraarhorn and Aletschhorn, respectively 12 and 8 km away. But from Lake Thun, and the greater part of the canton of Bern, it is the most conspicuous and the nearest of the Bernese Oberland peaks; with a height difference of 3,600 m between the summit and the town of Interlaken. This, and the extreme steepness of the north face, secured for it an early reputation for inaccessibility.
The landscapes around the Jungfrau are extremely contrasted. Instead of the vertiginous precipices of the north-west, the south-east side emerges from the upper snows of the Aletsch Glacier at around 3,500 metres. The 20 km long valley of Aletsch on the south-east is completely uninhabited and also surrounded by other similar glacier valleys. The whole area constitutes the largest glaciated area in the Alps as well as in Europe.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

PIZ ROSEG PAINTED BY JOHANNES SCHÜTZ

JOHANNES SCHÜTZ (1886-1953)
Piz Roseg (3,937 m -12,917 ft)
Switzerland - Italy border

In Piz Roseg and the Sellagruppe as seen from Fuorcla-Surlej, Graubunden, Switzerland. oil on canvas, 82 x 62cm, 1934, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery

The mountain
Piz Roseg (3,937 m -12,917 ft)  is a mountain of the Bernina Range, overlooking the Val Roseg in the Swiss canton of Graubünden.There are two summits on its main ridge:
- the south-east and higher summit (3,937 m)
- the north-west summit, known as the Schneekuppe (3,920 m). There is also a prominent top on the east-north-east ridge, called the Roseg Pitschen (3,868 m) (Italian border).
The first ascent of the mountain to the Schneekuppe was by F. T. Bircham with guides Peter Jenny and Alexander Fleury on 31 August 1863. The highest point of the mountain was reached two years later by A. W. Moore and Horace Walker with guide Jakob Anderegg on 28 June 1865.
Piz Roseg is separated from the neighbouring Piz Scerscen by the Porta da Roseg (3,522 m), also called the Güssfeldtsattel. The Swiss side of this col – a steep ice slope of up to 70° – was first climbed by Paul Güssfeldt, with guides Hans Grass, Peter Jenny and Caspar Capat on 13 September 1872. Grass and Capat had spent the previous day cutting steps up the first two-fifths of the route. The following day they added at least another 450 steps on the first ascent.
The 700-metre north-east face of Piz Roseg was first climbed by Christian Klucker and L. Norman-Neruda on 16 July 1890; the face – with a notable serac band halfway up – sports a number of difficult routes. Klucker, together with M. Barberia, also made the first traverse from the Italian side of the Porta da Roseg on 21 June 1898.

The artist
Schütz is a academic Swiss painter, born in the Netherlands. He comes from a family of artists. He is reknown for having painted the Swiss and Italian Alps mountains. No biographical details are avalaible about him, even if his works appears quite often in auctions.

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2021- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE WETTERHORN PAINTED BY ALEXANDRE CALAME

ALEXANDRE CALAME (1810-1864)
The Wetterhorn (3,692m-12,113ft)
Switzerland

In "In het Berner Oberland" (1847) Oil on canvas, 78 x 100 cm , Amsterdam Museum

The Mountain
The Wetterhorn (3,692m-12,113ft) in the Bernese Alps, towers above the village of Grindelwald. Formerly known as Hasle Jungfrau, it is one of three summits of a mountain named Wetterhorn sensu lato, or the "Wetterhцrner", the highest summit of which is the Mittelhorn (3,704 m) and the most distant the Rosenhorn (3,689 m). The Mittelhorn and Rosenhorn are mostly hidden from view from Grindelwald. The Grosse Scheidegg Pass crosses the col to the north, between the Wetterhorn and the Schwarzhorn.
Climbing
The Wetterhorn summit was first reached on August 31, 1844, by the Grindelwald guides Hans Jaun and Melchior Bannholzer, three days after they had co-guided a large party organized by the geologist Edouard Desor to the first ascent of the Rosenhorn. The Mittelhorn was first summitted on 9 July 1845 by the same guides, this time accompanied by a third guide, Kaspar Abplanalp, and by Stanhope Templeman Speer. The son of a Scottish physician, Speer lived in Interlaken, Switzerland.
A September 1854 ascent by a party including Alfred Wills is much celebrated in Great Britain. Apparently believing to be the first ascendant, Wills' description of this trip in his book "Wanderings Among the High Alps" (published in 1856) helped make mountaineering fashionable in Britain and ushered in the systematic exploration of the Alps by British mountaineers, the so-called golden age of alpinism.  Despite several well-documented earlier ascents and the fact that he was guided to the top, even in his obituary in 1912 he was considered to be "certainly the first who can be said with any confidence to have stood upon the real highest peak of the Wetterhorn proper" (i.e. the 3,692 m summit).  In a subsequent corrigendum, the editors admitted two earlier ascents, but considered his still "the first completely successful" one.
In 1866, Lucy Walker was the first documented female ascendant of the peak.
The 24-year-old English mountaineer William Penhall and his Meiringen guide Andreas Maurer were killed by an avalanche high up on the Wetterhorn on 3 August 1882.
The famed guide and Grindelwald native Christian Almer climbed the mountain many times in his life, including on his first of many trips with Meta Brevoort and her nephew W. A. B. Coolidge in 1868. His last ascent was in 1898 at the age of 70 together with his wife to celebrate their golden anniversary on top.  Winston Churchill is also supposed  to have climbed the Wetterhorn in 1894.

The painter
Alexandre Calame was a Swiss painter. He was the son of a skillful marble worker in Vevey. His father lost the family fortune, and Alexandre Calame was forced to work in a bank at the age of 15. When his father fell from a building and then died, the young Calame provided for his mother.
In his spare time he began to practice drawing small views of Switzerland. In 1829 he met his patron, the banker Diodati, who made it possible for him to study under landscape painter François Diday. After a few months he decided to devote himself fully to art.
In 1835, he began exhibiting his Swiss-Alps and forest paintings in Paris and Berlin. He became quite well known, especially in Germany, although Calame was more a drawer than an illustrator. He is associated with the Dusseldorf school of painting. In 1842 he went to Paris and displayed his works Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, the Brienzersee, the Monte Rosa and Mont Cervin. He taught in Geneva, where Adolf Mosengel was one of his pupils.
He went to Italy in 1844 and brought back from Rome and Naples countless paintings, among them one of the ruins of Paestum (in the city museum in Leipzig). He showed that he was capable of understanding Italian nature; but the Alps remained his speciality.
The glaciers, emerald-green, white foaming mountain water, which split the trees during the storm, and the whipped clouds, the multi-colored rocks, half masked from fog, in the rays of the gleaming sun, are those things, which he knew to be true to nature.
One of his most ingenious works is the representation of the four seasons and times of the day in four landscapes, a spring morning in the south, a summer midday in the Nordic flatlands, an Autumn evening, and a winter night on a mountain. He became popular with these large works, and his popularity grew with smaller pieces and lithographies, namely 18 studies of Lauterbrunnen and Meiringen and the 24 sheets of Alpine passes. These were widespread in France, England, and Germany and are still today used to teach this style of painting.
He died in Menton, France in 1864. An exhibition featuring more than thirty of Calame's paintings was held at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 2006.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE DEL FORNO PAINTED BY GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI

GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI (1868-1933)

Monte del Forno (3,214m -10,544 ft )

Italy - Switzerland border 

In Lake and mount  del Forno, watercolour,  Private collection  

The mountain
Monte del Forno (3,214m -10,544 ft )  not to be confused with  Monte Forno (Austrian, Slovenian Italian border)  is a mountain in the Bregaglia Range (Alps), located on the border between Italy and Switzerland. On its western side it overlooks the Forno Glacier and Lake.

The painter 
Giovanni Giacometti was a Swiss painter, the father of the famous painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and of Diego Giacometti, the furniture designer as well as the father of the architect Bruno Giacometti ! In 1886, he studied painting at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich, where he met Cuno Amiet the following year. Both decide to pursue their studies in Paris, in October stood at the Académie Julian, where Giacometti remains until 1891.
In 1893, shortly after his return to Switzerland, to Bergell, he became friends with Giovanni Segantini, his eldest ten years, which has great influence on his work by opening it to the beauty of the mountain scenery and the rules of divisionism. After his sudden death in 1899, Giacometti met Ferdinand Hodler, who teaches him to create a rigorous and ornamental composition by appropriate use of shapes and colors.
He sees regularly Cuno Amiet, who after a year spent in Pont-Aven, shared his experience with him. In 1900 he exhibited in the Swiss Pavillon of the Universal Exhibition in Paris. From 1905, Giacometti works again in a great complicity with Amiet and begins to break free from the influence of Segantini. In 1906, held an exhibition of his work at Kunstlerhaus Zurich. In 1907 he went to Paris with Amiet to the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. They copy all the works of Van Gogh. In 1908, he exhibited with the French Fauves at the Richter Gallery in Dresden.
In 1909, the Tannhauser Gallery presents his works in Munich. He meets Alexi von Jawlensky, and in 1911 participates in the Berlin Secession. In 1912, Giacometti has a solo show at the Kunsthaus Zurich presents two works in the Sonderbund of Cologne. In 1918 after Hodler' s death, he began to be involved into the Swiss political world paying an important part as a committed artist, following int that way friend Amiet.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE RIGI PAINTED BY TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851)

The Rigi or Rigi Kulm or Mount Rigi (1, 797m - 5,897ft)

Switzerland

In Lucerne by Moonlight - Sample Study, ca.1842/43, Watercolour on paper, 23.5 x 32.5 cm,

Tate London

The mountain
The Rigi (1, 797m - 5,897ft) is a mountain massif of the Alps, located in Central Switzerland.
The whole massif is almost entirely surrounded by the water of three different water bodies: Lake Lucerne, Lake Zug and Lake Lauerz. The range is in the Schwyzer Alps, and is split between the cantons of Schwyz and Lucerne, although the main summit, named Rigi Kulm, at 1,798 meters above sea level, lies within the canton of Schwyz. Technically, the Rigi is not a part of the Alps, and belongs instead to the Swiss plateau. It is mostly composed of molasse and other conglomerate, as opposed to the Bündner schist and flysch of the Alps.
The Rigi Kulm and other areas, such as the resort of Rigi Kaltbad, are served by Europe's oldest mountain railways, the Rigi Railways. Swiss Railways offer a special round-trip excursion, the “Rigi-Rundfahrt”, covering multiple segments by train, cog-railway, gondola (optional) and lake steamer. The whole area offers many activities such as skiing or sledging in the winter, and hiking in the summer.
The name Rigi is from Old High German "rîga" which means "row, stripe, furrow", after the stratification that is clearly visible on the north-side of the mountain. The name is first recorded in 1350 as Riginun. The name was interpreted as Regina montium "queen of mountains" by Albrecht von Bonstetten (1479), who however gives Rigena as alternative form.
Mt. Rigi has been featured in many works of art, including both paintings and literary publications. Perhaps the most famous paintings of the Rigi were the series by J.M.W. Turner , several of which are in the collection of the Tate Britain in London.
Mark Twain also visited Rigi during his tour of Central Europe in the late 1870s, and wrote about his travels in chapter 28 of his "A Tramp Abroad."

The painter
The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
More about Turner

_______________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau