DJEBEL TOUKBAL (4) PAINTED BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874-1965)
Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft)
Morocco

In Atlas mountains viewed from Marrakech, oil on canvas, 1949.

The mountain 

Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft)  is the high point of the High Atlas as well as Morocco and North Africa . It is located 63 km south of Marrakech, in the province of Al Haouz, inside the national park that bears its name.
The word Toubkal would be a deformation of French origin of the same Amazigh name Tugg Akal or toug-akal  which means "the one who looks up the earth". The people of this region still use this name.  The Toubkal massif is made up of rocks of various natures. Dark rocks of volcanic origin are found on the summits of andesite and rhyolite. Glaciers have left characteristic marks of their passage in the form of valleys in trough. During the Würm glaciation, the present valley of Assif n'Ait Mizane  was occupied by the longest glacier in the Atlas, about 5 km long.
The climate at Jebel Toubkal  is mountainous. The snow falls in winter and covers the summit.
In the nineteenth century, the interior of Morocco was still terra incognita for the Europeans and for a long time the Jebel Ayachi (3,747 m -12,293ft) ) passed for the highest summit of the High Atlas. In fact, the Toubkal was officially climbed for the first time only on 12 June 1923 by the Marquis de Segonzac, accompanied by Vincent Berger and Hubert Dolbeau. The cairns which they found on the summit had been built by the Berbers of the environs for whom the Toubkal is a holy place dedicated to Sidi Chamarouch (or Chamharouch). A sanctuary is dedicated to him on the way from Imlil to Toubkal.
The ascent of the roof of North Africa attracts a large number of followers of the trekking. This ascent attracts the crowd as much as it does not present great technical difficulties and that the assistance of the muleteers and their mules reduces the physical efforts. The altitude is relatively high (3,200 meters at the shelter and 4,167 meters at the summit).

The artist
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was forty before he discovered the pleasures of painting. The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose. He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace. Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures. His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy. He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees. To him it was the greatest of hobbies. He had found his other world -- a respite from crowding events and pulsating politics.
Encouragement to persevere with his hobby stemmed from an amateur prize (his first) which he won for "Winter Sunshine, Chartwell" a bright reflection of his Kentish home. He sent five paintings to be exhibited in Paris in the 1920s.
Modesty shone through that self-estimate. Modesty - and warm sympathy --were undeniably evident in what Churchill told a fellow painter, Sergeant Edmund Murray, his bodyguard from 1950 to 1965. Murray had been in the Foreign Legion and the London Metropolitan Police. Interviewing him to gauge his suitability, Churchill said: "You have had a most interesting life. And I hear you even paint in oils." After Murray had his work rejected by the Royal Academy, Churchill told him: "You know, your paintings are so much better than mine, but yours are judged on their merit."
Churchill's progressive workmanship demonstrates that a pseudonym employed at a crucial stage shrewdly enabled him to find out where he stood before moving on to fine-tool his talent.Churchill again favoured a pseudonym (Mr. Winter) in 1947 when offering works to the Royal Academy, so his fame in other spheres was not exploited. Two pictures were accepted and eventually the title of Honorary Academician Extraordinary was conferred on him. He earned it. That is borne out by the conclusion of the renowned painter Sir Oswald Birley: "If Churchill had given the time to art that he has given to politics, he would have been by all odds the world's greatest painter." Connoisseurs of Sir Winston's art stoutly defend their individual preference, but there are convincing arguments for bestowing highest praise on "The Blue Sitting Room, Trent Park" which was sold in 1949 to aid charity.
Despite outward flippancy, Churchill had a true craftsman's dedication when he took up a paint brush. He consulted teachers admired for their professionalism. He was fond of citing Ruskin's Elements of Drawing and readily accepted Sir William Orpen's suggestion that he should visit Avignon, where the light can verge on a miracle. He recalled an encounter on the Côte d'Azur with artists who worshipped at the throne of Cezanne and gratefully acknowledged the inspiration he derived from their exchange. Marrakech, Morocco -- irresistible and productive -- always brought out the best in him.
Churchill sought and found tranquillity in his art. His much quoted words, summing up expectations of celestial bliss, retain their lustre: "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject..."
___________________________________________

2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau  

JEBEL TOUBKAL (3) BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL  (1874-1965)

Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft) 

Morocco 

 In The Tower of Katubia Mosque, 1943,  oil on canvas,  The Brad Pitt collection 

About the painting 
The Tower of Katoubia Mosque, is  the only painting that Churchill painted during the war; he ultimately sent the painting to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In this painting, mount Toubkal, the highest summit of Moroccan Atlas, can be seen  afar the city of Marrakech., on the left side of the composition.

The mountain 
Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft)  is the high point of the High Atlas as well as Morocco and North Africa . It is located 63 km south of Marrakech, in the province of Al Haouz, inside the national park that bears its name.
The Toubkal massif is made up of rocks of various natures. Dark rocks of volcanic origin are found on the summits of andesite and rhyolite. Glaciers have left characteristic marks of their passage in the form of valleys in trough. During the Würm glaciation, the present valley of Assif n'Ait Mizane  was occupied by the longest glacier in the Atlas, about 5 km long.
The climate at Jebel Toubkal is mountainous. The snow falls in winter and covers the summit.
In the nineteenth century, the interior of Morocco was still terra incognita for the Europeans and for a long time the Jebel Ayachi (3,747 m -12,293ft) ) passed for the highest summit of the High Atlas. In fact, the Toubkal was officially climbed for the first time only on 12 June 1923 by the Marquis de Segonzac, accompanied by Vincent Berger and Hubert Dolbeau. The cairns which they found on the summit had been built by the Berbers of the environs for whom the Toubkal is a holy place dedicated to Sidi Chamarouch (or Chamharouch). A sanctuary is dedicated to him on the way from Imlil to Toubkal.
The ascent of the roof of North Africa attracts a large number of followers of the trekking. This ascent attracts the crowd as much as it does not present great technical difficulties and that the assistance of the muleteers and their mules reduces the physical efforts. The altitude is relatively high (3,200 meters at the shelter and 4,167 meters at the summit).

The painter
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was 40 before he discovered the pleasures of painting. The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose. He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace. Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures. His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy. He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees. To him it was the greatest of hobbies. He had found his other world -- a respite from crowding events and pulsating politics.
Encouragement to persevere with his hobby stemmed from an amateur prize (his first) which he won for "Winter Sunshine, Chartwell" a bright reflection of his Kentish home. He sent five paintings to be exhibited in Paris in the 1920s.
Modesty shone through that self-estimate. Modesty - and warm sympathy --were undeniably evident in what Churchill told a fellow painter, Sergeant Edmund Murray, his bodyguard from 1950 to 1965. Murray had been in the Foreign Legion and the London Metropolitan Police. Interviewing him to gauge his suitability, Churchill said: "You have had a most interesting life. And I hear you even paint in oils." After Murray had his work rejected by the Royal Academy, Churchill told him: "You know, your paintings are so much better than mine, but yours are judged on their merit."
Churchill's progressive workmanship demonstrates that a pseudonym employed at a crucial stage shrewdly enabled him to find out where he stood before moving on to fine-tool his talent.Churchill again favoured a pseudonym (Mr. Winter) in 1947 when offering works to the Royal Academy, so his fame in other spheres was not exploited. Two pictures were accepted and eventually the title of Honorary Academician Extraordinary was conferred on him. He earned it. That is borne out by the conclusion of the renowned painter Sir Oswald Birley: "If Churchill had given the time to art that he has given to politics, he would have been by all odds the world's greatest painter." Connoisseurs of Sir Winston's art stoutly defend their individual preference, but there are convincing arguments for bestowing highest praise on "The Blue Sitting Room, Trent Park" which was sold in 1949 to aid charity.
Despite outward flippancy, Churchill had a true craftsman's dedication when he took up a paint brush. He consulted teachers admired for their professionalism. He was fond of citing Ruskin's Elements of Drawing and readily accepted Sir William Orpen's suggestion that he should visit Avignon, where the light can verge on a miracle. He recalled an encounter on the Côte d'Azur with artists who worshipped at the throne of Cezanne and gratefully acknowledged the inspiration he derived from their exchange. Marrakech, Morocco -- irresistible and productive -- always brought out the best in him.
Churchill sought and found tranquillity in his art. His much quoted words, summing up expectations of celestial bliss, retain their lustre: "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject..."

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

JEBEL TOUBKAL BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL  (1874-1965)

Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft) 

Morocco 

 In Jebel Toubkal at sunset, oil on canvas

The mountain 

Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft)  is the high point of the High Atlas as well as Morocco and North Africa . It is located 63 km south of Marrakech, in the province of Al Haouz, inside the national park that bears its name.
The word Toubkal would be a deformation of French origin of the same Amazigh name Tugg Akal or toug-akal  which means "the one who looks up the earth". The people of this region still use this name.  The Toubkal massif is made up of rocks of various natures. Dark rocks of volcanic origin are found on the summits of andesite and rhyolite. Glaciers have left characteristic marks of their passage in the form of valleys in trough. During the Würm glaciation, the present valley of Assif n'Ait Mizane  was occupied by the longest glacier in the Atlas, about 5 km long.
The climate at Jebel Toubkal  is mountainous. The snow falls in winter and covers the summit.
In the nineteenth century, the interior of Morocco was still terra incognita for the Europeans and for a long time the Jebel Ayachi (3,747 m -12,293ft) ) passed for the highest summit of the High Atlas. In fact, the Toubkal was officially climbed for the first time only on 12 June 1923 by the Marquis de Segonzac, accompanied by Vincent Berger and Hubert Dolbeau. The cairns which they found on the summit had been built by the Berbers of the environs for whom the Toubkal is a holy place dedicated to Sidi Chamarouch (or Chamharouch). A sanctuary is dedicated to him on the way from Imlil to Toubkal.
The ascent of the roof of North Africa attracts a large number of followers of the trekking. This ascent attracts the crowd as much as it does not present great technical difficulties and that the assistance of the muleteers and their mules reduces the physical efforts. The altitude is relatively high (3,200 meters at the shelter and 4,167 meters at the summit).


The artist
 Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was forty before he discovered the pleasures of painting. The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose. He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace. Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures. His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy. He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees. To him it was the greatest of hobbies. He had found his other world -- a respite from crowding events and pulsating politics.
Encouragement to persevere with his hobby stemmed from an amateur prize (his first) which he won for "Winter Sunshine, Chartwell" a bright reflection of his Kentish home. He sent five paintings to be exhibited in Paris in the 1920s.
Modesty shone through that self-estimate. Modesty - and warm sympathy --were undeniably evident in what Churchill told a fellow painter, Sergeant Edmund Murray, his bodyguard from 1950 to 1965. Murray had been in the Foreign Legion and the London Metropolitan Police. Interviewing him to gauge his suitability, Churchill said: "You have had a most interesting life. And I hear you even paint in oils." After Murray had his work rejected by the Royal Academy, Churchill told him: "You know, your paintings are so much better than mine, but yours are judged on their merit."
Churchill's progressive workmanship demonstrates that a pseudonym employed at a crucial stage shrewdly enabled him to find out where he stood before moving on to fine-tool his talent.Churchill again favoured a pseudonym (Mr. Winter) in 1947 when offering works to the Royal Academy, so his fame in other spheres was not exploited. Two pictures were accepted and eventually the title of Honorary Academician Extraordinary was conferred on him. He earned it. That is borne out by the conclusion of the renowned painter Sir Oswald Birley: "If Churchill had given the time to art that he has given to politics, he would have been by all odds the world's greatest painter." Connoisseurs of Sir Winston's art stoutly defend their individual preference, but there are convincing arguments for bestowing highest praise on "The Blue Sitting Room, Trent Park" which was sold in 1949 to aid charity.
Despite outward flippancy, Churchill had a true craftsman's dedication when he took up a paint brush. He consulted teachers admired for their professionalism. He was fond of citing Ruskin's Elements of Drawing and readily accepted Sir William Orpen's suggestion that he should visit Avignon, where the light can verge on a miracle. He recalled an encounter on the Côte d'Azur with artists who worshipped at the throne of Cezanne and gratefully acknowledged the inspiration he derived from their exchange. Marrakech, Morocco -- irresistible and productive -- always brought out the best in him.
Churchill sought and found tranquillity in his art. His much quoted words, summing up expectations of celestial bliss, retain their lustre: "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject..."
___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

JEBEL TOUBKAL (2) BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL  (1874-1965)

Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft) 

Morocco

In a View of Marrakech and Jebel Toubkal, oil on canvas, private owner

The mountain 

Jebel Toubkal (4,167 m - 13, 671 ft)  is the high point of the High Atlas as well as Morocco and North Africa . It is located 63 km south of Marrakech, in the province of Al Haouz, inside the national park that bears its name.
The word Toubkal would be a deformation of French origin of the same Amazigh name Tugg Akal or toug-akal  which means "the one who looks up the earth". The people of this region still use this name.  The Toubkal massif is made up of rocks of various natures. Dark rocks of volcanic origin are found on the summits of andesite and rhyolite. Glaciers have left characteristic marks of their passage in the form of valleys in trough. During the Würm glaciation, the present valley of Assif n'Ait Mizane  was occupied by the longest glacier in the Atlas, about 5 km long.
The climate at Jebel Toubkal  is mountainous. The snow falls in winter and covers the summit.
In the nineteenth century, the interior of Morocco was still terra incognita for the Europeans and for a long time the Jebel Ayachi (3,747 m -12,293ft) ) passed for the highest summit of the High Atlas. In fact, the Toubkal was officially climbed for the first time only on 12 June 1923 by the Marquis de Segonzac, accompanied by Vincent Berger and Hubert Dolbeau. The cairns which they found on the summit had been built by the Berbers of the environs for whom the Toubkal is a holy place dedicated to Sidi Chamarouch (or Chamharouch). A sanctuary is dedicated to him on the way from Imlil to Toubkal.
The ascent of the roof of North Africa attracts a large number of followers of the trekking. This ascent attracts the crowd as much as it does not present great technical difficulties and that the assistance of the muleteers and their mules reduces the physical efforts. The altitude is relatively high (3,200 meters at the shelter and 4,167 meters at the summit).

The artist
 Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was forty before he discovered the pleasures of painting. The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose. He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace. Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures. His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy. He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees. To him it was the greatest of hobbies. He had found his other world -- a respite from crowding events and pulsating politics.
Encouragement to persevere with his hobby stemmed from an amateur prize (his first) which he won for "Winter Sunshine, Chartwell" a bright reflection of his Kentish home. He sent five paintings to be exhibited in Paris in the 1920s.
Modesty shone through that self-estimate. Modesty - and warm sympathy --were undeniably evident in what Churchill told a fellow painter, Sergeant Edmund Murray, his bodyguard from 1950 to 1965. Murray had been in the Foreign Legion and the London Metropolitan Police. Interviewing him to gauge his suitability, Churchill said: "You have had a most interesting life. And I hear you even paint in oils." After Murray had his work rejected by the Royal Academy, Churchill told him: "You know, your paintings are so much better than mine, but yours are judged on their merit."
Churchill's progressive workmanship demonstrates that a pseudonym employed at a crucial stage shrewdly enabled him to find out where he stood before moving on to fine-tool his talent.Churchill again favoured a pseudonym (Mr. Winter) in 1947 when offering works to the Royal Academy, so his fame in other spheres was not exploited. Two pictures were accepted and eventually the title of Honorary Academician Extraordinary was conferred on him. He earned it. That is borne out by the conclusion of the renowned painter Sir Oswald Birley: "If Churchill had given the time to art that he has given to politics, he would have been by all odds the world's greatest painter." Connoisseurs of Sir Winston's art stoutly defend their individual preference, but there are convincing arguments for bestowing highest praise on "The Blue Sitting Room, Trent Park" which was sold in 1949 to aid charity.
Despite outward flippancy, Churchill had a true craftsman's dedication when he took up a paint brush. He consulted teachers admired for their professionalism. He was fond of citing Ruskin's Elements of Drawing and readily accepted Sir William Orpen's suggestion that he should visit Avignon, where the light can verge on a miracle. He recalled an encounter on the Côte d'Azur with artists who worshipped at the throne of Cezanne and gratefully acknowledged the inspiration he derived from their exchange. Marrakech, Morocco -- irresistible and productive -- always brought out the best in him.
Churchill sought and found tranquillity in his art. His much quoted words, summing up expectations of celestial bliss, retain their lustre: "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject..."

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT BURGESS & EMERALD LAKE BY SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874-1965), 

Mount Burgess (2,599 m - 8,527 ft)

Canada

In  Emerald Lake, Canada, oil on canvas, Private owner 

The Mountain 

Mount Burgess (2,599 m - 8,527 ft) is a mountain in Yoho National Park and is part of the Canadian Rockies. It is located in the southwest buttress of Burgess Pass in the Emerald River and Kicking Horse River Valleys.  It was named in 1886 by Otto Koltz after Alexander MacKinnon Burgess, the Deputy Minister of the Interior at the time.

In 1892, James J. McArthur was the first to ascend this mountain. He was completing a survey of the lands adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1909, geologist Charles D. Walcott discovered the Burgess Shale deposit of fossils with fine details on Mount Burgess. The Burgess Shale is a black shale fossil bed (Lagerstätte) named after nearby Burgess Pass, in which are found new and unique species, many in fact constituting entire new phyla of life, and even today some of these unique species have proven impossible to classify. The fossils are especially valuable because they include appendages and soft parts that are rarely preserved.

The mountain has two summits. The lower north summit was named Walcott Peak in his honour.

Between 1954 and 1971, Mount Burgess was featured on the back of the Canadian ten-dollar bill. It is still informally called the "Ten Dollar Mountain" as a result.

In 1984, UNESCO declared the area a World Heritage Site.

The painter
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was 40 before he discovered the pleasures of painting. The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose. He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace. Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures. His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy. He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees. To him it was the greatest of hobbies. He had found his other world -- a respite from crowding events and pulsating politics....
Full Wandering vertexes entry  =>

_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT DENALI MAP BY HEINRICH. C. BERANN

HEINRICH  C. BERANN (1915 - 1999) 

Mount Denali, ex Mount Mc Kinley (6,190 m - 20,310 ft)

United States of America (Alaska)

 In Denali map for US National Park Service, 1995.

The mountain 

Denali (also known as Mount McKinley, see the Naming paragraph below)) is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of  6,190 m - 20,310 feet above sea level. Denali is the third most prominent and third most isolated peak after Mount Everest and Aconcagua.  Denali  is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven  continents. Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering  challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass.  The seven summit are :
Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Vinson  Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m) in Australia.

Located in the Alaska Range in the interior of the U.S. state of Alaska, Denali is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.

Denali has two significant summits: the South Summit is the higher one, while the North Summit has an elevation of 19,470 ft (5,934 m) and a prominence of approximately 1,270 ft (387 m).  The North Summit is sometimes counted as a separate peak (see e.g., fourteener) and sometimes not; it is rarely climbed, except by those doing routes on the north side of the massif.

Five large glaciers flow off the slopes of the mountain. The Peters Glacier lies on the northwest side of the massif, while the Muldrow Glacier falls from its northeast slopes. Just to the east of the Muldrow, and abutting the eastern side of the massif, is the Traleika Glacier. The Ruth Glacier lies to the southeast of the mountain, and the Kahiltna Glacier leads up to the southwest side of the mountain.  With a length of 44 mi (71 km), the Kahiltna Glacier is the longest glacier in the Alaska Range.

The Koyukon Athabaskans who inhabit the area around the mountain have for centuries referred to the peak as Dinale or Denali. The name is based on a Koyukon word for "high" or "tall".  During the Russian ownership of Alaska, the common name for the mountain was Bolshaya Gora (Russian: Большая Гора, meaning Russian "big mountain)" which is the Russian translation of Denali.  It was briefly called Densmore's Mountain in the late 1880s and early 1890s after Frank Densmore, an Alaskan prospector who was the first European to reach the base of the mountain.

In 1896, a gold prospector named it McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917.  

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson declared the north and south peaks of the mountain the "Churchill Peaks", in honor of British statesman Winston Churchill.  The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali in 1975, which was how it is called locally.  However, a request in 1975 from the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same at the federal level was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley's hometown of Canton.

On August 30, 2015, just ahead of a presidential visit to Alaska, the Barack Obama administration announced the name Denali would be restored in line with the Alaska Geographic Board's designation. 

The artist

Heinrich C. Berann, (1915–1999) the father of the modern panorama map, was born into a family of painters and sculptors in Innsbruck, Austria. He taught himself by trial and error. In the years 1930-1933 he attended the arts and design school "Bundeslehranstalt für Malerei" in Innsbruck.

Winning of first prize at a competition for a panorama map created great enthusiasm in him. Using his artistic heritage and new self-discovered techniques he invented a new way of painting landscapes for tourist purposes. The further development of both these panorama maps and his artistic style was influenced by lasting impressions he received during his military service in German Army in Norway and Northern Finland in 1942.

In 1962 he painted Mount Everest for the National Geographic Society, one of his most famous panoramic maps. He worked with Marie Tharp and Bruce C. Heezen to produce maps of the entire ocean floor in 1977.

He later created four panoramas for the United States National Park Service: Yellowstone National Park, North Cascades National Park, Yosemite National Park and finally Mt. McKinley National Park (now Denali). He was very sick when he painted Denali (above) - but he finished it in the age of 81.

In 2000, Tom Patterson of the National Park Service explored ways of digitally creating panoramas like Berann did for the Park Service.

MONT DENALI PEINT PAR JORGE RODRIGUEZ-GERADA

 

JORGE RODRIGUEZ-GERADA (bn.1 966)
 Mount Denali (6, 190 m - 20, 310 ft)
United States of America (Alaska)

 La montagne
Denali (également connu sous le nom de mont McKinley,)) est le plus haut sommet de montagne en Amérique du Nord, avec une altitude au sommet de 6 190 m - 20 310 pieds au-dessus du niveau de la mer. Denali est le troisième sommet le plus important et le troisième le plus isolé après le mont Everest et l'Aconcagua. Denali est l'un des sept sommets, qui comprend les plus hautes montagnes de chacun des sept continents. Les atteindre tous est considéré comme un défi d'alpinisme, réalisé pour la première fois le 30 avril 1985 par Richard Bass.
Situé dans la chaîne de l'Alaska à l'intérieur de l'État américain de l'Alaska, Denali est la pièce maîtresse du parc national et de la réserve de Denali.
Denali a deux sommets importants: le sommet sud est le plus élevé, alors que le sommet nord a une altitude de 19 470 pieds (5 934 m). Le sommet nord est parfois compté comme un pic distinct et parfois non; il est rarement escaladé, sauf par ceux qui font des voies sur le versant nord du massif.
Cinq grands glaciers coulent des pentes de la montagne. Le glacier Peters se trouve sur le côté nord-ouest du massif, tandis que le glacier Muldrow tombe de ses pentes nord-est. Juste à l'est du Muldrow, et jouxtant le côté est du massif, se trouve le glacier Traleika. Le glacier Ruth se trouve au sud-est de la montagne et le glacier Kahiltna mène au côté sud-ouest de la montagne. Avec une longueur de 44 mi (71 km), le glacier Kahiltna est le plus long glacier de la chaîne de l'Alaska.
Les Koyukon Athabaskans qui habitent la région autour de la montagne ont pendant des siècles appelé le pic Dinale ou Denali. Il a été brièvement appelé Densmore's Mountain à la fin des années 1880 et au début des années 1890 en l'honneur de Frank Densmore, un prospecteur de l'Alaska qui fut le premier Européen à atteindre la base de la montagne.
En 1896, un chercheur d'or l'a nommé McKinley  en soutien au candidat à la présidence de l'époque, William McKinley, t devenu président l'année suivante. Les États-Unis ont officiellement reconnu le nom de Mount McKinley après que le président Wilson a signé le Mount McKinley National Park Act du 26 février 1917.
En 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson a déclaré les sommets nord et sud de la montagne les "Churchill Peaks", en l'honneur de l'homme d'État britannique Winston Churchill. Le Conseil des noms géographiques de l'Alaska a changé le nom de la montagne en Denali en 1975, comme on l'appelle localement.
Le 30 août 2015, juste avant une visite présidentielle en Alaska, l'administration de Barack Obama a annoncé que le nom Denali serait rétabli conformément à la désignation de l'Alaska Geographic Board.

L'artiste
Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada est un artiste contemporain cubano-américain. Né à Cuba le 5 février 1966 et élevé aux États-Unis. Il crée principalement des œuvres dans des espaces urbains à grande échelle. Il a été membre fondateur du mouvement de brouillage culturel new-yorkais du début des années 1990, travaillant d'abord avec le groupe "Artfux" et plus tard avec le "Cicada Corps of Artists". Au cours de cette période, il a également lancé des interventions sur les panneaux d'affichage et la publicité publique. En 1997, il a commencé à s'orienter vers le travail en solo. En 2002, Rodríguez-Gerada a déménagé à Barcelone où il s'est concentré sur les dessins au fusain éphémères à grande échelle, qui composent sa série Identity. Il a ensuite développé la Série Terrestre ; des terrassements éphémères si vastes qu'ils sont visibles de l'espace. D'autres projets en cours incluent la série Identity Composite et des œuvres d'art plus petites qu'il appelle Fragment Series, Urban Analogies et Memorylythics. Depuis 2009, il organise le festival annuel AvantGuard Urbano ; un petit festival d'art urbain avec de grands noms, qui s'est tenu à Tudela, en Navarre, dans le nord de l'Espagne. Il participe également à de nombreux salons et expositions.

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

 

DENALI PAINTED BY SYDNEY LAURENCE

SYDNEY LAURENCE (1865-1940) 

Denali, ex Mount Mc Kinley ( 6,190 m - 20,310 ft)

United States of America (Alaska)

1. Denali and Tokositna River - The Anchorage Museum 

2. Denali painted in 1919 
  3. Denali painted in 1921
4.  Denali painted in 1923

5. Denali in August 1924

The mountain 

Denali (also known as Mount McKinley, see the Naming paragraph below)) is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of  6,190 m - 20,310 feet above sea level. Denali is the third most prominent and third most isolated peak after Mount Everest and Aconcagua.  Denali  is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven  continents. Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering  challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass.  The seven summit are :
Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Vinson  Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m) in Australia.

Located in the Alaska Range in the interior of the U.S. state of Alaska, Denali is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.

Denali has two significant summits: the South Summit is the higher one, while the North Summit has an elevation of 19,470 ft (5,934 m) and a prominence of approximately 1,270 ft (387 m).  The North Summit is sometimes counted as a separate peak (see e.g., fourteener) and sometimes not; it is rarely climbed, except by those doing routes on the north side of the massif.

Five large glaciers flow off the slopes of the mountain. The Peters Glacier lies on the northwest side of the massif, while the Muldrow Glacier falls from its northeast slopes. Just to the east of the Muldrow, and abutting the eastern side of the massif, is the Traleika Glacier. The Ruth Glacier lies to the southeast of the mountain, and the Kahiltna Glacier leads up to the southwest side of the mountain.  With a length of 44 mi (71 km), the Kahiltna Glacier is the longest glacier in the Alaska Range.

About the naming 

The Koyukon Athabaskans who inhabit the area around the mountain have for centuries referred to the peak as Dinale or Denali. The name is based on a Koyukon word for "high" or "tall".  During the Russian ownership of Alaska, the common name for the mountain was Bolshaya Gora (Russian: Большая Гора, meaning Russian "big mountain)" which is the Russian translation of Denali.  It was briefly called Densmore's Mountain in the late 1880s and early 1890s after Frank Densmore, an Alaskan prospector who was the first European to reach the base of the mountain.

In 1896, a gold prospector named it McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917.  

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson declared the north and south peaks of the mountain the "Churchill Peaks", in honor of British statesman Winston Churchill.  The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali in 1975, which was how it is called locally.  However, a request in 1975 from the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same at the federal level was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley's hometown of Canton.

On August 30, 2015, just ahead of a presidential visit to Alaska, the Barack Obama administration announced the name Denali would be restored in line with the Alaska Geographic Board's designation. 

Climbing history

The first recorded attempt to climb Denali was by Judge James Wickersham in 1903, via the Peters Glacier and the North Face, now known as the Wickersham Wall. Because of the route's history of avalanche danger, it was not successfully climbed until 1963.

Famed explorer Dr. Frederick Cook claimed the first ascent of the mountain in 1906. His claim was regarded with some suspicion from the start, but was also widely believed. It was later proved false, with some crucial evidence provided by Bradford Washburn when he was sketched on a lower peak.

In 1910, four area locals – Tom Lloyd, Peter Anderson, Billy Taylor, and Charles McGonagall – known as the Sourdough Expedition, attempted to climb Denali despite a lack of climbing experience. The group spent approximately three months on the mountain. Their purported summit ascent day included carrying a bag of doughnuts each, a thermos of hot chocolate, and a 14-foot (4.2 m) spruce pole. Two of them reached the North Summit, the lower of the two, and erected the pole near the top. According to the group, the time they took to reach the summit was a total of 18 hours. Until the first ascent in 1913, their claims were disbelieved, in part due to false claims they had climbed both summits.

In 1912, the Parker-Browne expedition nearly reached the summit, turning back within just a few hundred yards of it due to harsh weather. Hours after their ascent, the Great Earthquake of 1912 shattered the glacier they had ascended.

The first ascent of the main summit of Denali came on June 7, 1913, by a party led by Hudson Stuck and Harry Karstens. The first man to reach the summit was Walter Harper, an Alaska Native. Robert Tatum also made the summit. Using the mountain's contemporary name, Tatum later commented, "The view from the top of Mount McKinley is like looking out the windows of Heaven!"   Stuck confirmed, via binoculars, the presence of a large pole near the North Summit; this report confirmed the Sourdough ascent, and today it is widely believed that the Sourdoughs did succeed on the North Summit. However, the pole was never seen before or since, so there is still some doubt. Stuck also discovered that the Parker-Browne party were only about 200 feet (61 m) of elevation short of the true summit when they turned back.

The mountain is regularly climbed today; in 2003, around 58% of climbers reached the top. But by 2003, the mountain had claimed the lives of nearly 100 mountaineers over time.[49] The vast majority of climbers use the West Buttress Route, pioneered in 1951 by Bradford Washburn,  after an extensive aerial photographic analysis of the mountain. Climbers typically take two to four weeks to ascend Denali.

The painter 

Sydney Mortimer Laurence was an American Romantic landscape painter and is widely considered one of Alaska's most important historical artists. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied at the Art Students League of New York.  He exhibited regularly by the late 1880s. He and his wife traveled to England, settling in 1889 in the English artists' colony of St. Ives, Cornwall from 1889 to 1898. over the next decade he exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists and was included in the Paris Salon in 1890, 1894, and 1895, winning an award in 1894.

Suddently in 1903 or 1904, it appears that Laurence abandoned his family and came to Alaskan shich was quite a wild aerea.

Laurence was the first professionally trained artist to make Alaska his home. He moved to Alaska in 1904 for reasons still unknown. Records from 1907 show he lived in the village of Tyonek on the North Shore of Cook Inlet in Southcentral Alaska, about 60 miles from Ship Creek where Anchorage would begin years later.  Living the hard life of the pioneer prospector, he painted little in his first years in the then-District of Alaska, but between 1911 and 1914 he began to focus once again on his art.  He moved from Valdez to the nascent town of Anchorage in 1915 and by 1920 was Alaska's most prominent painter. 

Laurence painted Mount McKinley  at least 5 or 6 times all along his life, but it is image of Denali from the hills above the rapids of the Tokositna River, shown in this blog in n° 1, which  became his trademark. It is this image more than any other which personifies Laurence for his many admirers and collectors in Alaska and beyond. Laurence forged a uniquely personal style by applying the tonalist techniques he had learned in New York and Europe to the wilderness of the North. He, more than any other artist, defined for Alaskans and others the image of Alaska as "The Last Frontier."

Laurence painted as welle a variety of Alaskan scenes in his long and prolific career, among them sailing ships and steamships in Alaskan waters, totem poles in Southeast Alaska, dramatic headlands and the quiet coves and streams of Cook Inlet, cabins and caches under the northern lights, and Alaska Natives, miners, and trappers engaged in their often solitary lives in the northern wilderness.

In May 1927, Laurence married Jeanne Kunath, a French-born artist who had emigrated to the United States in 1920. He died in Anchorage on December 10, 1940.

Several places were named for Laurence in his adopted hometown. Laurence Court is a short street in the Bootleggers Cove neighborhood of Anchorage. Perhaps the most significant was the Sydney Laurence Auditorium, which sat downtown at the northwest corner of West Sixth Avenue and F Street. This structure was replaced during the 1980s by the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in what Anchorage called "Project 80s", a large-scale civic improvement program carried out under mayors George M. Sullivan and Tony Knowles; now the Sydney Laurence theater is smallest of three stages at the Performing Arts Center.

Références 

- Sydney Laurence Biography - University of Alaska 

WETTERHORN PAINTED BY BARONESS HELGA VON CRAMM

BARONESS HELGA VON CRAMM (1840-1919)

The Wetterhorn (3, 692m -12, 113ft)

 Switzerland

In Weterhorn seen from the Little Scheideck,  Christmas card chromolithograph, 1870 or 880 

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 Wetterhorn summit was the intended terminal for the world's first passenger carrying aerial tramway, but only the first quarter was built. It was in operation until the beginning of World War I.
There are four "normal" routes, depending on direction and season. You will need rope, ax, crampons. Hundred years a ago, a cable car from Grindelwald (1200 m) in three stages was planned. The lowest part can still be seen and is an interesting reminder of the enthusiasm investors had before World War I.
Wetterhorn is neither a difficult, nor an easy mountain. Each access has its specialty. Three huts and  one bivouac are at your choice and if you are in good shape and can climb 2500 meters in one morning, you do not have to bother about huts. The choice of the huts varies according to the season. In summer you have two huts with extremely nice walks. Even if you do not succeed in climbing the Wetterhorn, you will like the view and the variation of the climb to the Dossen - or Gleckstein huts. If you have an inexperienced person or child with you, a short rope is nice to have. Since the Wetterhorn can be seen from most mountains within 100 miles, the view is unique. Although everything up there is snow and ice, looking perpendicularly down to the green pastures of Grindelwald provides an unforgettable contrast

The painter 
Baroness Helga von Cramm was a German and Swiss water-colourist and graphic artist. She made her quite famous with her in chromolithograh Christmas cards.  Helga von Cramm lived in Britain, Switzerland (St. Moritz), Germany and Italy, and Florence.
Helga was the eldest child of Wolf Frederick Adolf Freiherr von Cramm-Burchard  Helga's father, having been brought up in the Court at Brunswick, educated at the court of knights, served in the Brunswick Cuirassiers , was an equerry and an hereditary Chamberlain and Lord of the Kings Bedchamber (that of William VIII of Braunschweig). Later he retired to his estate at Rhode. Her brother Aschwin Thedel Adelbert Freiherr v. Sierstorpff-Cramm, is one of the four great-grandfathers of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, now Princess Beatrix, and mother of the present king, Willem-Alexander. Helga was thus a great-great aunt of the former Dutch Queen.
In the United Kingdom, from 1877, she exhibited at the : Society of Women Artists,  Royal Scottish Academy,  Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours,  Dudley Gallery, Fine Art Society, Glasgow Institute,Grosvenor Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts ,Royal Society of British Artists and at a few other places...

SIGNAL HILL PEINT PAR ROBERT PILOT

ROBERT PILOT (1898-1967)
Signal Hill (167m- 548 ft)
Canada (Labrador)

In The Narrows- St Johns, Newfoundland, Huile sur toile, 45 x 60, 5 cm, 

Fondation Sobey pour les Arts, Canada

La colline
Signal Hill (167m- 548 ft)  dont le  point culminant est Ladies' Lookout,  est une colline qui surplombe la ville de St. John's, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador, Canada. Principalement un site historique national, à côté se trouve le musée en grande partie enfoui du Johnson Geo Center et son parc associé. La communauté de The Battery est située sur le versant de la colline surplombant le port. Le 12 décembre 1901, la première transmission sans fil transatlantique a été reçue par Guglielmo Marconi,  Situé sur un emplacement hautement stratégique surplombant le Narrows, la seule entrée du port, les fortifications remontent au milieu du 17e siècle. L'Université Memorial de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador a un campus sur les pentes inférieures, dans l'ancien Battery Hotel, et est également maintenant propriétaire du Johnson Geo Centre.

Le peintre
Robert Wakeham Pilot (MBE, RCA, est un artiste canadien connu comme peintre, graveur et muraliste.En 1910, sa mère, veuve, épouse de l'artiste Maurice Cullen et s'installe dans la maison de Cullen à Montréal avec lequel il commence à étudier l'art.  Il étudie ensuite  à Montréal avec William Brymner puis, en mars 1916, il s'enrôle dans l’armée. De 1920 à 1922, il étudie à l'Académie Julian à Paris. En 1922, il expose au Salon de Paris. Son travail  subit des influences impressionnistes. À son retour au Canada, il est élu membre associé de l'Académie royale des arts du Canada en 1925 et occupe le poste de président de l'Académie de 1952 à 1954. Sa première exposition personnelle eut lieu en 1927, chez Watson Art Galleries. Il remporte le prix Jessie Dow cette année-là ainsi qu'en 1934 Voyageant abondamment en Europe, mais aussi au Québec il cultive une vision relativement nostalgique du paysage urbain ou rural, dans lequel il camoufle le plus souvent les témoignages visuels d’une modernisation du territoire. En 1941,  il s'enrôlé de nouveau et participe à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en tant que capitaine dans le régiment des Black Watch. Son rôle pendant ce conflit lui vaut la médaille du couronnement de la reine Élisabeth II en 1953.  Les peintures de Pilot ont été présentées à Winston Churchill, à la reine Élisabeth II et au duc d’Édimbourg. D'autres se retrouvent dans la collection du Musée des beaux-arts du Canada et du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.Une exposition rétrospective de son œuvre, eut lieu au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal en 1969.

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

THE WETTERHORN PAINTED BY JOSEPH A. KOCH

JOSEPH ANTON KOCH  (1768-1839)

Das Wetterhorn or Halse Jungfrau   (3,692m -12,113ft)

Switzerland

 Mit dem reichenbachtal,1824 - Museum Oscar Reinhart

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 Wetterhorn summit was the intended terminal for the world's first passenger carrying aerial tramway, but only the first quarter was built. It was in operation until the beginning of World War I.

There are four "normal" routes, depending on direction and season. You will need rope, ax, crampons. Hundred years a ago, a cable car from Grindelwald (1200 m) in three stages was planned. The lowest part can still be seen and is an interesting reminder of the enthusiasm investors had before World War I.

Wetterhorn is neither a difficult, nor an easy mountain. Each access has its specialty. Three huts and  one bivouac are at your choice and if you are in good shape and can climb 2500 meters in one morning, you do not have to bother about huts. The choice of the huts varies according to the season. In summer you have two huts with extremely nice walks. Even if you do not succeed in climbing the Wetterhorn, you will like the view and the variation of the climb to the Dossen- or Gleckstein huts. If you have an inexperienced person or child with you, a short rope is

nice to have. Since the Wetterhorn can be seen from most mountains within 100 miles, the view is unique. Although everything up there is snow and ice, looking perpendicularly down to the green pastures of Grindelwald provides an unforgettable contrast.

The painter 

Joseph Anton Koch was an Austrian (Tyrol) painter of Neoclassicism and later the German Romantic movement; he is perhaps the most significant neoclassical landscape painter.

He   received academic training in the Karlsschule Stuttgart, a strict military academy. In 1791, he ran away, and traveled through France and Switzerland. He arrived in Rome in 1795. Koch was close to the painter Asmus Jacob Carstens and carried on Carstens' "heroic" art, at first in a literal manner. 

After 1800, Koch developed as a landscape painter.  In Rome, he espoused a new type of "heroic" landscape, revising the classical compositions of Poussin and Lorrain with a more rugged, mountainous scenery. In 1812, forced through inadequate income from his work, or in protest of the French invasion, he went to Vienna, where he worked prolifically. He stayed in Vienna until 1815. During this period, he incorporated more non-classical themes in his work.  In Vienna, he was influenced by Friedrich Schlegel and enthusiasts of old German art.  In response, his style became harsher. When returning to Rome, Koch became a conspicuous figure in the German artists' colony there.  He painted, among other works, the four frescoes in the Dante Room of the Villa Massimi (1824–29).  He wrote Moderne Kunstchronik oder die rumfordische Suppe gekocht und geschrieben von J. A. Koch (Stuttgart, 1834) which was directed humorously against unjustifiable criticism and false connoisseurship.  Koch's last years were spent in great poverty. He died in Rome,where he was buried in the Teutonic Cemetery, located next to St. Peter's Basilica within Vatican City.  He etched 20 Italian landscapes and a large sheet representing The Oath of the French at Millesimo; 14 pages after Dante, adding later another 30 pages (published Vicenza, 1904), and 36 pages after Ossian.  

He contributed American landscape scenes to the works of Alexander von Humboldt (1805).

NAANU-I-CAKE PAINTED BY CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924)

 

CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924)
Naanu-i-Cake (no elevation data)
Fiji

In "Nananu, Fiji ", watercolor 28.5 x 42 cm

The volcano
Naanu-i-Cake  (no elevation data) is a volcanic island in Fiji less than one kilometer off the coast of the main island of Viti Levu, near the Rakiraki-district in Ra Province. Nananu-i-Cake is located immediately next to the island of Nananu-i-Ra. Nananu-i-Cake and Mabua (the islet located immediately to the southeast) islands are about 600 acres (242.81 hectares) in area. The main residence on the island was designed by the architecture firm of Murray Cockburn, based in Auckland.  A deep-water jetty is on the island's western shore.  In 1974, Sir Harold Mitchell visited Fiji from the UK and purchased Nananu-i-Cake and Mabua as a retreat. Because of Harold's position of Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party under Sir Winston Churchill and his social and political standing, several high-profile dignitaries visited and stayed on the island. Commemorative trees were planted for many of these high-profile visits. Nananu-i-Cake has remained in Sir Harold Mitchell's family since 1974.  Nananu-i-Cake also retains evidence of moka, stone formations built in tidal areas to trap fish at low tide, and ring-wall fortifications built with volcanic rocks. As of 2012, the entire island is tentatively available for sale as a private island, for an estimated equivalent of around $8-8.5 million USD. In early 2022 the island received renewed attention on social media as self-proclaimed crypto-enthustiasts Max Olivier and Helena López Jurado announced plans to purchase the Nananu-i-Cake and build a private resort aimed at other crypto-enthusiasts using money raised from selling NFTs tied to property on the island to prospective residents.

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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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau