MONT AIGUILLE PAINTED BY WILHELM STEINFIELD

WILHELM STEINFIELD (1816-1854)

Mont Aiguille  (2, 087m -9,209ft) 

France ( Dauphiné) 

In Gebirgslandschaft - Gebirgslandschaft im französischen Dauphiné. Im Zentrum der Mont Aiguille, 1839, Oil on panel,  52 x 41cm, 

The mountain 
Mount Aiguille (2, 087m -9,209ft) , located in the town of Chichilianne, is an advanced tooth of the eastern cliff of the Vercors massif, on the edge of Trièves, south of the department of Isere (France). It is one of the seven wonders of Dauphiné area.
From a geomorphological point of view, it is a structure left by the erosion around it, of the plateau of which it was originally part. Mount Aiguille owes its particular shape to this: a block of cliffs and a summit meadow, similar to the pastures of the entire Vercors plateau.
Mount Aiguille is a limestone scale previously attached to the rest of the Vercors massif. The base consists of a set of soft limestone and marl surmounted by a wall itself composed of a thick series of limestone more rigid. Its morphology results from the difference in the behavior of the layers in the face of erosion.
During the formation of the Alps, the layers of limestone, then lining the bottom of the Tethys, were raised, folded and fractured. The latter favored runoff, which caused significant erosion of the base of the needle (where the layers are softer), while whole sections of the wall collapsed as a result of the undermining of the base. base and by karstification of limestone layers. The countless active faults between Mount Aiguille and the Vercors Massif followed by the planing of the eastern flank of the Vercors massif by glaciers during the different glaciations of the Quaternary era have allowed its current isolation.

The painter
Wilhelm Steinfeld was an Austrian 19th century painter most known during his life for his landscape and mountains paintings. Strangely enough no informations are available about him except he was the son of Franz Steinfeld (1787-1868), very famous himself for his historical paintings.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE WATZMANN BY WILHELM STEINFIELD

WILHELM  STEINFIELD (1816-1854)
The Watzmann  (2, 713m - 8, 901ft) 

Germany 

In  Watzmann-Mittelspitze - Motiv aus Unterstein im Bayrischen, oil on canvas 

The mountain
The Watzmann (2,713m - 8,901ft) is a mountain in the Bavarian Alps south of the village of Berchtesgaden. It is the third highest in Germany, and the highest located entirely on German territory. Three main peaks array on a N-S axis along a ridge on the mountain's taller western half: Hocheck (2,651 m), Mittelspitze (Middle Peak, 2,713 m) and Sьdspitze (South Peak, 2,712 m).
The Watzmann massif also includes the 2,307 m Watzmannfrau (Watzmann Wife, also known as Kleiner Watzmann or Small Watzmann), and the Watzmannkinder (Watzmann Children), five lower peaks in the recess between the main peaks and the Watzmannfrau.
The entire massif lies inside Berchtesgaden National Park.
The Watzmann Glacier is located below the famous east face of the Watzmann in the Watzmann cirque and is surrounded by the Watzmanngrat arête, the Watzmannkindern and the Kleiner Watzmann. The size of the glacier reduced from around 30 hectares (74 acres) in 1820 until it split into a few fields of firn, but between 1965 and 1980 it advanced significantly again and now has an area of 10.1 hectares (25 acres). Above and to the west of the icefield lie the remains of a transport-bomber that crashed in October 1940.
Amongst the other permanent snow and icefields the Eiskapelle ("Ice Chapel") is the best known due to its easy accessibility from St. Bartholomä. The Eiskapelle may well be the lowest lying permanent snowfield in the Alps. Its lower end is only 930 metres high in the upper Eisbach valley and is about an hour's walk from St. Bartholomä on the Königssee. The Eiskapelle is fed by mighty avalanches that slide down from the east face of the Watzmann in spring and accumulate in the angle of the rock face. Sometimes a gate-shaped vault forms in the ice at the point where the Eisbach emerges from the Eiskapelle. Before entering there is an urgent warning sign that others have been killed by falling ice.
In the east face itself is another icefield in the so-called Schöllhorn cirque, called the Schöllhorneis, which is crossed by the Kederbach Way (Kederbacher-Weg). The cirque and icefield are named after the Munich citizen, Christian Schöllhorn, who was the first victim on the east face. On 26 May 1890 he fell at the upper end of the icefield into the randkluft and was fatally injured. Another small nameless snowfield is located several hundred metres below the Mittelspitze also in the east face.

The painter
Wilhelm Steinfeld was an Austrian 19th century painter most known during his life for his landscape and mountains paintings. Strangely enough no informations are available about him except he was the son of Franz Steinfeld (1787-1868), very famous himself for his historical paintings.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau