LE MONT RAINIER PEINT PAR ALBERT BIERSTADT

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)
Mont Rainier (4.932m)
Etats-Unis (Etat de Washington)

In Mount Rainier, 1876, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

 

Le volcan
Le mont Rainier (4.932m) est un volcan situé dans l'État de Washington, aux États-Unis. Il constitue le point culminant de l'État et de la chaîne des Cascades. Il est recouvert par une importante calotte glaciaire. C'est un stratovolcan actif de l'arc volcanique des Cascades, dont la dernière éruption remonterait à la fin du 19e siècle. Situé à une centaine de kilomètres au sud-sud-est de l'agglomération de Seattle, il présente des risques pour les populations et les infrastructures environnantes, notamment en raison des potentiels lahars. Découvert par les premiers Européens en 1792 lors d'un voyage d'exploration mené par George Vancouver, le volcan tire son nom de son ami, le contre-amiral dans la Royal Navy Peter Rainier. Sa première ascension remonte à 1870. Dans les années 1890, la nécessité de protéger ses ressources naturelles et économiques est démontrée ; il est ainsi intégré au Parc national du mont Rainier, qui attire depuis une foule de visiteurs en quête de nature et d'alpinistes à la recherche de sommets. Son ascension présente des difficultés liées à la météorologie et à l'évolution en milieu glaciaire.
Le sommet du mont Rainier possède trois cimes : la plus élevée se nomme Columbia Crest ; la deuxième est Point Success (4 315 mètres), une cime secondaire au sud-ouest, et la troisième Liberty Cap (4 303 mètres et 151 mètres de proéminence) au nord-ouest. Sur le flanc oriental se trouve également le pic Little Tahoma à 3 394 mètres, qui est un vestige érodé du mont Rainier lorsqu'il était encore plus élevé ; avec 256 mètres de proéminence et en dehors des voies principales vers le sommet du mont Rainier, il peut être considéré comme un sommet distinct et, le cas échéant, le troisième plus élevé de l'État de Washington après le mont Adams.

Le peintre
Albert Bierstadt est un peintre allemand naturalisé américain. Connu pour ses paysages de l'Ouest americain Bierstadt faisait partie de l’Hudson River School, un groupe informel de peintres du xixe siècle pratiquant une peinture romantique, baignée d’une lumière radieuse qui lui valu taussi l'appellation de Luminisme. Albert Bierstadt est né à Solingen en province de Rhénanie. Sa famille émigre à New Bedford en 1833. Il étudie la peinture avec des membres de l’École de peinture de Düsseldorf de 1853 à 1857 et voyage sur le continent européen avec ses amis, les peintres Sanford Robinson Gifford et Worthington Whittredge. De retour aux États-Unis, il enseigne un temps le dessin à New Bedford avant de se consacrer entièrement à son art. En 1859, il entreprend un voyage vers l’Ouest jusqu'aux montagnes Rocheuses, en compagnie d’un arpenteur du gouvernement américain. Il retourne dans l’Ouest en 1863 avec l’écrivain Fitz Hugh Ludlow, dont la femme devint plus tard son épouse. En 1863, Albert Bierstadt demande à William Byers, fondateur du journal de Denver, le Rocky Mountain News, de lui servir de guide pour une expédition d'Idaho Springs, vers le sommet du Mont Evans, qui sera d'abord appelé Mont Bierstadt, puis Mont Rosalie.
Dans les années 1870, il vit à San Francisco. En 1876, sa femme est diagnostiquée tuberculeuse, aussi le couple passe-t-il plusieurs mois par année à Nassau aux Bahamas jusqu'au décès de la malade en 1893. Pendant cette période, le peintre voyage également, en solitaire, au Canada. En 1882, plusieurs de ses œuvres sont détruites dans l'incendie de son atelier, situé dans le comté de Westchester en banlieue de New York.
Pendant sa longue carrière, Bierstadt a produit plus de 500 toiles.

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2024 - Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau   

ARCO NATURALE DE CAPRI PEINT PAR WILLIAM STANLEY HASELTINE

 

WILLIAM STANLEY HASELTINE (1835-1900)
Arco Naturale (18m)
Italie (Capri)

In Natural Arch at Capri (1871) Huile sur toile, 86.4 x 139.7 cm,National Gallery of Arts, Washington DC

Le relief
L'Arco naturale (18m) désigne une formation rocheuse en forme d'arche présente dans la partie sud-est de l'île de Capri dans la baie de Naples. Creusée naturellement par l'érosion, elle a une largeur de 12 mètres de large sur une hauteur de 18 mètres par rapport au sol. Surplombant le bord de mer, son ouverture semi-circulaire encadre un panorama de légende.  Depuis Capri, le site est accessible exclusivement au moyen d'itinéraires pédestres : le premier et le plus court emprunte, au niveau de l'église San Michele, la via Matermania et via de l'Arco Naturale. Le second itinéraire fait une boucle par la via Tragara, passe par le belvedere di Tragara, domine les faraglioni, puis serpente par la via Pizzolungo, jalonnée par la villa Malaparte et la Grotta di Matromania, jusqu'à l'Arco.

Le peintre
William Stanley Haseltine, est un peintre paysagiste et dessinateur américain, à la fois associé à l'Hudson River School, à l'école de peinture de Düsseldorf et au luminisme. Il fait partie de ses peintres grands voyageurs du 19e siècle qui écumèrent une grande partie de l'Europe mais aussi des Etats-Unis. En 1858, il retourne à Philadelphie et, à la fin de l'année 1859, il s'installe à New York dans le Tenth Street Studio Building . Il y côtoie notamment les peintres Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt et Worthington Whittredge. Il peint alors des paysages de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, dont les bords de mer de Narragansett, Nahant et de l'île des Monts Déserts. En 1860, il devient membre de l'Académie américaine de design. Il s'installe à Rome ou il réalise des paysages de la ville éternelle et de la campagne romaine,  de Sicile, de l'île de Capri et de Campanie et d'autres régions d'Italie (le lac Majeur,  Porto Venere, Venise ...). Dans les années 1880 et 1890, il voyage en France, en Belgique et aux Pays-Bas, en Bavière et dans le comté de Tyrol où il continue à dessiner et peindre. En 1874, il loue un studio dans le palais Altieri. Dans ses dernières années, il retourne de manière épisodique aux États-Unis, réalisant un dernier voyage vers la côte ouest en 1899.

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2024 - Wandering Vertexes ....
Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau 

MONT DIABLO PEINT PAR WILLIAM KEITH

WILLIAM KEITH (1838-1911)
Mont Diablo (1 ,173m - 3,648 ft)
Etats-Unis (Californie)

In Sunset on Mount Diablo, 1877 Huile sur toile, 100.7 cm x 151.5 cm.
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto CA

Le peintre
William Keith était un peintre américano- écossais célèbre pour ses paysages californiens. Il est associé au tonalisme et à l'Ecole de Barbizon. Bien que la majeure partie de sa carrière se soit déroulée en Californie, il a c effectué deux longs voyages d'études en Europe et a eu un studio à Boston en 1871-72 et un à New York en 1880.
Dans les années 1870, Keith est arrivé en Californie, dans la vallée de Yosemite, avec une lettre de recommandation auprès de John Muir. Les deux hommes sont devenus de grands amis et cette amitié a perduré les 38 années du reste de leur vie . Tous deux étaient nés en Écosse la même année et partageaient un amour pour les montagnes de Californie. James Mitchell Clarke a décrit leur amitié comme une amitié "dans laquelle une affection et une admiration profondes s'exprimaient à travers une sorte de joute verbale, permanente ".
Au cours des années 1870, Keith a peint un certain nombre de grandes œuvres panoramiques dont Kings River Canyon (Oakland Museum) et California Alps (Mission Inn, Riverside). Ces oeuvre voulaient directement rivaliser avec celles de sujet similaires peint par Albert Bierstadt ou Thomas Hill.
"Mes images sont celles qui viennent de l'intérieur.de moi. Je ressens une émotion et je peins immédiatement une image qui l'exprime. Le sentiment est la valeur réelle dans mes images, et seules quelques personnes comprennent cela. Quiconque sait utiliser de la peinture et des pinceaux peut peindre une vraie scène de la nature - c'est une image objective. Mais pour un artiste digne de ce nom, tout doit cela doit venir de l'intérieur de lui même " .

La montagne
Le mont Diablo (1 ,173m - 3,648 ft) est une montagne située dans le comté de Contra Costa dans la région urbaine de San Francisco, au sud de la ville de Clayton et au nord-ouest de Danville. Ce sommet isolé est visible de l'ensemble de la baie de San Francisco et de nombreux endroits de la Californie du Nord. Le mont Diablo ressemble à une double pyramide sous de nombreux angles, et inclut plusieurs sommets secondaires, le plus important et le plus proche étant celui de l'autre moitié de ladite double pyramide, North Peak. Le sommet du mont Diablo est accessible aux véhicules motorisés, randonneurs ou cyclistes. Par temps clair, il est possible du sommet d'apercevoir le massif montagneux de la Sierra Nevada et la montagne de l'extrémité sud de la chaîne des Cascades, le volcan du pic Lassen, à environ 290 kilomètres. Le mont Shasta reste invisible du fait de la courbure terrestre, mais le Half Dome du parc national de Yosemite est lui visible par temps exceptionnellement clair grâce à un télescope.

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

LONGS PEAK PAINTED BY THOMAS WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE

THOMAS WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE (1820-1910)
Longs Peak (4,346 m - 14, 259 ft)
United States of America (Colorado)

In Longs Peak (Colorado), oil on canvas, c1870, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

The mountain
Longs Peak (4,346 m - 14, 259 ft) is a high and prominent mountain summit in the northern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. This fourteener is located in the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness, 9.6 miles (15.5 km) southwest by south (bearing 209°) of the town of Estes Park, Colorado, United States. Longs Peak is the northernmost fourteener in the Rocky Mountains and the highest point in Boulder County and Rocky Mountain National Park. The mountain was named in honor of explorer Stephen Harriman Long and is featured on the Colorado state quarter. Longs Peak can be prominently seen from Longmont, Colorado, as well as from most of the northern Front Range Urban Corridor, being is one of the most prominent mountains in Colorado, rising 9,000 feet (2,700 m) above the western edge of the Great Plains. The peak is named for Major Stephen Long, who is said to be the first to spot the great mountains on behalf of the U.S. Government on June 30, 1820. Together with the nearby Mount Meeker, the two are sometimes referred to as the Twin Peaks (not to be confused with a nearby lower mountain called Twin Sisters). As the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park, the peak has long been of interest to climbers. The easiest route is not "technical" during the summer season. It was probably first used by pre-Columbian indigenous people collecting eagle feathers.

The first recorded ascent was in August 23, 1868 by the surveying party of John Wesley Powell via the south side. The East Face of the mountain is 1,675 feet steep and is surmounted by a 1,000 feet steep sheer cliff known as "The Diamond" (so-named because of its shape, approximately that of a cut diamond seen from the side and inverted - see image at right).  The oldest person to summit Longs Peak was Rev. William "Col. Billy" Butler, who climbed it on September 2, 1926, his 85th birthday. In 1932, Clerin “Zumie” Zumwalt summited Longs Peak 53 times.
Longs Peak has one remaining glacier named Mills Glacier. The glacier is located around 12,800 feet (3,900 m) at the base of the Eastern Face, just above Chasm Lake. A permanent snowfield, called The Dove, is located north of Longs Peak. Longs Peak is one of fewer than 50 mountains in Colorado that have a glacier.

The painter
Thomas Worthington Whittredge was an American artist of the Hudson River School. Whittredge was a highly regarded artist of his time, and was friends with several leading Hudson River School artists including Albert Bierstadt and Sanford Robinson Gifford. He traveled widely and excelled at landscape painting, many examples of which are now in major museums. He served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1874 to 1875 and was a member of the selection committees for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and the 1878 Paris Exposition, both important venues for artists of the day.  Whittredge journeyed across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains in 1865 with Sanford Gifford and John Frederick Kensett. The trip resulted in some of Whittredge's most important works—unusually oblong, sparse landscapes that captured the stark beauty and linear horizon of the Plains. Whittredge later wrote in his autobiography, "I had never seen the plains or anything like them. They impressed me deeply. I cared more for them than for the mountains... Whoever crossed the plains at that period, notwithstanding its herds of buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer and fleet rabbits, could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence."
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

CADILLAC MOUNTAIN BY SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD

SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880)
Cadillac Mountain (466 m - 1,530 ft)
United States of America (Maine)

In The Artist Sketching at Mount Desert, Maine, oil on canvas 1860s, 

National Gallery of art, Washington DC 

The mountain,
Cadillac Mountain (466 m-1,530 ft) is located on Mount Desert Island, within Acadia National Park, in the U.S. state of Maine. Its summit is the highest point in Hancock County and the highest within 25 miles (40 km) of the shoreline of the North American continent between the Cape Breton Highlands, Nova Scotia and peaks in Mexico. It is known as the first place in the U.S. to see the sunrise, although that is only true for a portion of the year. Before being renamed in 1918, the mountain had been called Green Mountain. The new name honors the French explorer and adventurer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac. In 1688, De la Mothe requested and received from the Governor of New France a parcel of land in an area known as Donaquec which included part of the Donaquec River (now the Union River) and the island of Mount Desert in the present-day U.S. state of Maine. Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, a shameless self-promoter who had already appropriated the "de la Mothe" portion of his name from a local nobleman in his native Picardy, thereafter referred to himself as Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, Donaquec, and Mount Desert ! From 1883 until 1893 the Green Mountain Cog Railway ran to the summit to take visitors to the Green Mountain Hotel. The hotel burned down in 1895 and the cog train was sold and moved to the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire

 

The painter 

Sanford Robinson Gifford was born in Greenfield, New York and spent his childhood in Hudson, New York, the son of an iron foundry owner. He attended Brown University 1842-44, before leaving to study art in New York City in 1845. He studied drawing, perspective and anatomy under the direction of the British watercolorist and drawing-master, John Rubens Smith.  He also studied the human figure in anatomy classes at the Crosby Street Medical college and took drawing classes at the National Academy of Design.  By 1847 he was sufficiently skilled at painting to exhibit his first landscape at the National Academy and was elected an associate in 1851, an academician in 1854. Thereafter Gifford devoted himself to landscape painting, becoming one of the finest artists of the early Hudson River School.
Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint. In addition to exploring New England, upstate New York and New Jersey, Gifford made extensive trips abroad. He first traveled to Europe from 1855 to 1857, to study European art and sketch subjects for future paintings. During this trip Gifford also met Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge.
In 1858, he traveled to Vermont, "apparently" with his friend and fellow painter Jerome Thompson. Details of their visit were carried in the contemporary Home Journal. Both artists submitted paintings of Mount Mansfield, Vermont's tallest peak, to the National Academy of Design's annual show in 1859. Thompson's work, "Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain" is now owned by the MET in New York, according to the report.
Thereafter, he served in the Union Army as a corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia upon the outbreak of the Civil War. A few of his canvases belonging to New York City's Seventh Regiment and the Union League Club of New York are testament to that troubled time.
During the summer of 1867, Gifford spent most of his time painting on the New Jersey coast, specifically at Sandy Hook and Long Branch, according to an auction Web site.
Another journey, this time with Jervis McEntee and his wife, took him across Europe in 1868. Leaving the McEntees behind, Gifford traveled to the Middle East, including Egypt in 1869. Then in the summer of 1870 Gifford ventured to the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, this time with Worthington Whittredge and John Frederick Kensett. At least part of the 1870 travels were as part of a Hayden Expedition, led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.
Returning to his studio in New York City, Gifford painted numerous major landscapes from scenes he recorded on his travels. Gifford's method of creating a work of art was similar to other Hudson River School artists. He would first sketch rough, small works in oil paint from his sketchbook pencil drawings. Those scenes he most favored he then developed into small, finished paintings, then into larger, finished paintings.
Gifford referred to the best of his landscapes as his "chief pictures". Many of his chief pictures are characterized by a hazy atmosphere with soft, suffuse sunlight. Gifford often painted a large body of water in the foreground or middle distance (see above) in which the distant landscape would be gently reflected. Examples of Gifford's "chief pictures" in museum collections today include: Lake Nemi (1856–57), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio ; The Wilderness (1861), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio ;  A Passing Storm (1866), Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut ;  Ruins of the Parthenon (1880), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
On August 29, 1880, Gifford died in New York City, having been diagnosed with malarial fever. The MET in New York City celebrated his life that autumn with a memorial exhibition of 160 paintings. A catalog of his work published shortly after his death recorded in excess of 700 paintings during his career.

 

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
 

TETON RANGE PAINTED BY THOMAS MORAN

THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926)
Grand Teton (4,199 m - 13,775 ft)
United States of America (Wyoming)

In Teton range, Oil on cnavas, 1897, 76.2 x 114.3 cm, The MET, (on view on Gallery 765)

 About this painting in the MET note
" As Albert Bierstadt claimed the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada for his art, so Moran made the Yellowstone region and the Grand Canyon his signature subjects. His dazzling watercolors of Yellowstone led directly to its designation, in 1872, as the first national park. A native of Great Britain and an ardent admirer of the English painter J. M. W. Turner, Moran used prismatic color to capture the splendors of the American West—such as this dramatic view of the Tetons, located just south of Yellowstone. For centuries, Indigenous communities lived on and cared for this land, yet they are notably absent from Moran’s work. Instead, the artist depicted the landscape as an untouched pre-industrial paradise—thus, ripe for White settlement and colonization "

The mountain
Grand Teton (4,199 m - 13,775 ft) is the highest mountain in Grand Teton National Park in Northwest Wyoming, and a classic destination in American mountaineering. It is the highest point of the Teton Range, and the second highest peak in the U.S. state of Wyoming after Gannett Peak. The mountain is entirely within the Snake River drainage basin, which it feeds by several local creeks and glaciers.The Teton Range is a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, which extend from southern Alaska to northern New Mexico.  Grand Teton's name was first recorded as Mount Hayden by the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition of 1870. However, the name "the Grand Teton" had early currency. The Edition of April, 1901 of the USGS 1:125,000 quadrangle map of the area shows "Grand Teton" as the name of the peak. A United States National Park named "Grand Teton National Park" was established by law in 1929. By 1931, the name Grand Teton Peak was in such common usage that it was recognized by the USGS Board on Geographic Names. Another shift in usage led the Board to shorten the name on maps to Grand Teton in 1970. The origin of the name is disputed. The most common explanation is that "Grand Teton" means "large teat" in French, named by either French-Canadian or Iroquois members of an expedition led by Donald McKenzie of the North West Company. However, other historians disagree, and claim that the mountain was named after the Teton Sioux tribe of Native Americans.

The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection with The Three Tetons painted in 1895.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT BAKER / KULSHAN PAINTED BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

 

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)

Mount Baker / Kulshan ((3,286 m - 10,781 ft

United States of America

In Mount Baker from the Frazier River, c. 1890, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum

The mountain
Mount Baker ((3,286 m - 10,781 ft), also known as Koma Kulshan or simply Kulshan, is a active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington in the United States. Mount Baker has the second-most thermally active crater in the Cascade Range after Mount Saint Helens. About 30 miles (48 km)[due east of the city of Bellingham, Whatcom County, Mount Baker is the youngest volcano in the Mount Baker volcanic field. While volcanism has persisted here for some 1.5 million years, the current glaciated cone is likely no more than 140,000 years old, and possibly no older than 80–90,000 years. Older volcanic edifices have mostly eroded away due to glaciation.
After Mount Rainier, Mount Baker is the most heavily glaciated of the Cascade Range volcanoes; the volume of snow and ice on Mount Baker, 0.43 cu mi (1.79 km3) is greater than that of all the other Cascades volcanoes (except Rainier) combined. It is also one of the snowiest places in the world; in 1999, Mount Baker Ski Area, located 9 mi (14.5 km) to the northeast, set the world record for recorded snowfall in a single season—1,140 in (29 m; 95 ft).
Mt. Baker is the third-highest mountain in Washington and the fifth-highest in the Cascade Range, if Little Tahoma Peak, a subpeak of Mount Rainier, and Shastina, a subpeak of Mount Shasta, are not counted.[Located in the Mount Baker Wilderness, it is visible from much of Greater Victoria, Nanaimo, and Greater Vancouver in British Columbia, and to the south, from Seattle (and on clear days Tacoma) in Washington.
Indigenous peoples have known the mountain for thousands of years, but the first written record of the mountain is from Spanish explorer Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, who mapped it in 1790 as Gran Montaña del Carmelo, "Great Mount Carmel". The explorer George Vancouver renamed the mountain for 3rd Lieutenant Joseph Baker of HMS Discovery, who saw it on April 30, 1792.

The painter
Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents. He later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth.
In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School....
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT NIBLOCK, MOUNT TEMPLE, MOUNT WHYTE BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

 

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)
Mount Niblock (2,976 m - 9,764 ft)
Mount Temple (3,544 m -11,627 ft) 
Mount Whyte (2,983 m -9,787 ft) 
Canada ( Alberta)

In Canadian Rockies (Lake Louise), ca. 1889, oil on paper mounted to board, 37.5 x 53.3cm, The MET, not on view 

About the painting
During his travels in the American and Canadian West, Bierstadt made oil sketches such as this one, which he used, back in his New York studio, for reference in concocting the huge, carefully detailed panoramic scenes that brought him critical acclaim during the 1860s and 1870s. By the end of the century, American viewers had come to appreciate the more modest landscape observations of Barbizon and Impressionist painters, and Bierstadt’s sketches were themselves valued as fresh, direct records of the places he had visited.
Extract of the Notice of the MET museum

The mountains 
Mount Niblock (2,976 m (9,764 ft) (first on left in the painting  above)  is a mountain in Banff National Park near Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. The mountain was named in 1904 after John Niblock, a superintendent with the Canadian Pacific Railway. Niblock was an early promoter of tourism in the Rockies and influenced the naming of some of the CPR stops in Western Canada.
Mount Temple (3,544 m - 11,627 ft)  (in the middle of the painting above) is located in the Bow River Valley between Paradise Creek and Moraine Creek and is the highest peak in the Lake Louisea rea. The peak dominates the western landscape along the Trans-Canada Highway from Castle Junction to Lake Louise. The mountain was named by George Mercer Dawson in 1884 after Sir Richard Temple who visited the Canadian Rockies that same year. Mt. Temple was the first 11,000-foot (3,400 m) peak to be climbed in the Canadian segment of the Rocky Mountains. First Ascent of a peak above 11,000 feet (3,353 m) in the Canadian Rockieso was made  August 17, 1894 by Walter D. Wilcox, Samuel E. S. Allen and Lewis Frissell .
Mount Whyte (2,983 m -9,787 ft)  (at the background of the painting above) is a mountain in Alberta, Canada located in Banff National Park, near Lake Louise. The mountain can be seen from the Trans-Canada Highway, and offers views of the Valley of the Ten Peaks, including the Chateau Lake Louise. The mountain was named in 1898 by Sir William Methuen after William Whyte, a representative of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mount.Whyte is usually combined with  Mount Niblock when done as a scramble. However, while Mt. Niblock is rated a moderate scramble, Mt. Whyte is much more difficult due to additional exposure and loose rock. The scramble should not be attempted in snowy conditions due to considerable fall distance which would likely prove fatal.

The painter
Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents. He later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth.
In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.
Full Wandering Vertextes entry =>__

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

TUCUPIT POINT BY THOMAS MORAN

THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926)

Tucupit Point (2,346 m - 7,698 ft)

United States of America  (Utah)

In Colburn's Butte, South Utah, watercolor, 1873, 35,2 x 24cm,  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 About the painting
The journey that resulted in the first painting of the Grand Canyon also yielded this watercolor by the same artist, Thomas Moran. In late July 1873, Moran was en route from Salt Lake City to the north rim of the Grand Canyon to join the expedition of John Wesley Powell. Near Kanarraville, Utah, he recorded in his sketchbook two Navajo sandstone pinnacles that offered a preview of the magnificent Zion Canyon to the south, which he visited days later. With Moran was Justin Colburn, a correspondent for the New York Times, to whom he eventually gave the watercolor he made from the sketch and whose name he gave to its principal feature.
Colburn's Butte, today called Tucupit Point, is in the Kolob Canyon section of Zion National Park. In Moran's watercolor, it is distinguished by the white cloud swirling down to silhouette its peak. The spontaneous-looking passage sets off a zigzag pattern of hill and grass that continues to the bottom of the sheet. Such celestial-terrestrial dynamics were a hallmark of the work of the English-born Moran, an admirer of the turbulent landscapes of J. M. W. Turner. From the watercolor Moran designed an engraving that was published in the art magazine The Aldine in 1874.  

From the MET museum  notice

 The mountain

Tucupit Point (2,346 m - 7,698 ft ) is a prominent sandstone pinnacle in the Kolob Canyons of Zion National Park. The formation lays off of Taylor Creek Trail. The pinnacle - visible from U.S. Route 40 to the west - has been the subject of numerous photographs. ans paintings. The pinnacle was then named "Colburn's Butte" after Justin Colburn, a correspondent for the New York Times travelling with Thomas Moran; it would later be renamed Tucupit Point, "Tucupit" being the Paiute word for wildcat.

The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection with The Three Tetons painted in 1895.
_____________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT OF HOLY CROSS PAINTED BY THOMAS MORAN

 

THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926)

Mount of the Holy Cross (4,270 m - 14, 011 ft)
 United States of America  (Colorado)

In  Mountain of  the Holy Cross, oil on canvas, 1875, Museum of the American West, Los Angeles.

The mountain 
Mount of the Holy Cross  (4,270 m - 14, 011 ft) is a high and prominent mountain summit in the northern Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. It was named for the distinctive cross-shaped snowfield on its northeast face. Under USDA Forest Service administration, the mountain was proclaimed "Holy Cross National Monument" by Herbert Hoover on May 11, 1929. The monument was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933.  In 1950, it was returned to the Forest Service and lost its National Monument status. This mountain has been the subject of painters, photographers and even a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Cross of Snow. The first publicly available photograph was published in National Geographic magazine. It is still much photographed but it is not as well known today as it was in the past.
Nearby features include Bowl of Tears Lake, directly under the east face of the peak, Tuhare Lakes, in a cirque that lies south of a significant subpeak, and several other lakes. Notable locations within 35 mi (56 km) include the Dotsero volcano (near Interstate 70),  abd the famous resort of Vail and  Aspen.  The first recorded ascent of Holy Cross was in 1873, by F. V. Hayden and photographer W. H. Jackson during one of Hayden's geographical surveys. However, the peak may well have been ascended previously by miners or American Indians.

The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection with The Three Tetons painted in 1895.

_____________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

TOWER FALL AND SUlPHUR MOUNTAIN BY THOMAS MORAN

THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926)

Tower fall, Sulphur mountain  (1,933 m - 6,342 ft) 

United States of America (Wyoming)

In Tower Fall and Sulphur Mountain, Thomas Moran, 1875, The library of Congress

The formation
Tower of Tower Fall  (1,933 m - 6,342 ft) is a rock pinnacles, part of a most famous waterfall on Tower Creek in the northeastern region of Yellowstone National Park, in the U.S. state of Wyoming. Approximately 1,000 yards (910 m) upstream from the creek's confluence with the Yellowstone River, the fall plunges 132 feet (40 m). Its name comes from the rock pinnacles at the top of the fall. Tower Creek and Tower Fall are located approximately three miles south of Roosevelt Junction on the Tower-Canyon road. On September 15–16, 1869, members of the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition spent a whole day in the Tower Fall area before crossing the river and traveling up the East Fork of the Yellowstone (Lamar River). In August 1870, the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition camped near and explored the Tower Fall area for several days en route to Yellowstone Lake.  The fall was renamed Tower Fall (singular) by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1928
Suplhur Moutain not to be confused with  the 10 others ones in United States of America and Canada, having the same name.  Those mountains are usaually name that way because of the hot springs on their slopes.

The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection with The Three Tetons painted in 1895.

_____________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

AGPARTUT PAINTED BY WILLIAM BRADFORD

WILLIAM BRADFORD  (1823-1892) 

Agpartut  (1, 922m - 6,306 ft)

Greenland -  Denmark - Nunavut 

In  Scene in the Arctic  Baffin Bay, oil on canvas 1880,  De Young Museum San Francisco 

The mountain 
Agpartut (1, 922m - 6,306 ft) is located in Greenland, an island belonging to Denmark, in the municipality of Avannaata, on the west coast bordered by Baffin Bay. Its summit is the Wegener Peninsula  highest point. 

The mountain is explored for the first time by the Italian expedition Spedizione Città di Carate in 1966 led by Giuseppe Cazzaniga with Gianni Merlini, Ambrogio Rigamonti, Carlo Bonfanti and Massimiliano Chiolo..

The first ascent was made in 1976 during a second Spanish expedition, led by Anglada Josep Manuel with Jordi Riera, Costa Lluis, Joan Cerda, Emilio Civis, Ursula Willius and Jordi Pons. Because of the inaccessibility of the region, attempts to climb are rare and it seems that the summit was climbed only once
The Chanel French expedition in 2001 was directed by Pierre Chanel and Alain Dutrévis, with Christine Cayrel, Marc Brouillet, Philippe Marty, François de Montbéliard and Didier Bensimhon.

The painter 

William Bradford (1823-1892) was an American romanticist painter, photographer and explorer. His early work focused on portraits of the many ships in New Bedford Harbor. In 1858, his painting New Bedford Harbor at Sunset was included in Albert Bierstadt's landmark New Bedford Art Exhibition.
William Bradford  is known for his paintings of ships and Arctic seascapes. He went on several Arctic expeditions with Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes, and was the first American painter to portray the frozen regions of the north. In 1862, Boston, he was an art teacher to Charles Dormon Robinson.
With funds provided by LeGrand Lockwood, Bradford traveled to the Arctic aboard the steamship Panther in 1869, accompanied by photographers John L. Dunmore and George Critcherson.

 Upon his return, Bradford spent two years in London, where he published an account of his trips to the north, entitled The Arctic regions, illustrated with photographs taken on an art expedition to Greenland; with descriptive narrative by the artist. (London, 1873).

 In 1874, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member.[
He was associated with the Hudson River School. He adopted their techniques and became highly interested in the way light touches water and how it affects the appearance of water surfaces and the general atmospherics of a painting. He compositionally balanced many of his paintings by creating a counter-subject and by placing darker colors around the edges, framing and counteracting the center's better-lit subject.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT HOOD / WY' EAST PAINTED BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)

Mount Hood / Wy 'east (3,429m - 11, 249ft)

United States of America (Oregon) 

In Indians crossing the Columbia river with Mt Hood in the distance, 1867

oil on canvas, 60.3 x 90.8 cm. Private collection (Sotheby's London)

Catalogue note about this painting 

Albert Bierstadt’s dramatic views of the majestic American West earned him broad popularity as one of the country's most distinguished artists of the mid-nineteenth century. He was among the greatest American painters to fully capture the splendor of the landscape and to record the many moods of its climate and terrain. Bierstadt was one of the very few artists to have traveled in the western territories and his views were eagerly anticipated and met with curiosity and wonder. His idealized interpretations of the western landscape brought to life the image of the fabled frontier for many who would never travel there.
It was on his second journey west in 1863 with the writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow that Bierstadt first beheld Mount Hood. The party traveled up from California into the Pacific Northwest on horseback and then by steamer and rail up the Columbia River from near Mount Hood. According to Patricia Junker, “Mount Hood was an almost continual presence as the two men made their way up the Columbia, and we know from Ludlow that Bierstadt studied it intently, seeing it from different perspectives, from the northeast and the northwest, and in the changing light of different times of day. At Dalles City Bierstadt paid an ‘old Indian interpreter and trapper’ to guide him to a high point southwest of town that offered the most imposing view of the mountain in the rising sun, and there he spent most of a morning making oil studies of the opaline peak. ‘His work upon this mountain was in some respects the best he ever accomplished,’ Ludlow offered, ‘being done with a loving faithfulness hardly called out by Hood’s only rival, the Peak of Shasta’” 

Albert Bierstadt: Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, Seattle, Washington, 2011, p. 38).
As is typical of his distinctive aesthetic, Bierstadt presents a heroic vision of the Oregon landscape in Indians on the Columbia River. Suffused with a rosy golden light, the snowcapped, rocky peak of Mount Hood rises proudly above the Columbia River where a group of Indians row their boat across its crystalline waters towards the shore. Emanating tranquility and serenity, this Edenic vision of wilderness demonstrates Bierstadt’s response to the national desire for renewal and a return to peace in the aftermath of the Civil War. However, works such as Indians on the Columbia River additionally attest to Bierstadt’s desire to adapt the European ideal of the sublime – the ability of the natural world to elicit awe and wonder – to an explicitly American landscape. The dramatic geological features he found throughout the West lent themselves well to this endeavor, but this preoccupation deepened during his travels in the Pacific Northwest; for the first time Bierstadt found volcanoes that rivaled those of South America such as Cotopaxi, which had already been famously portrayed on several occassions by Bierstadt’s contemporary, Frederic Edwin Church

The mountain
Mount Hood / Wy'east (3,429m-11,249ft) is a potentially active stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc of northern Oregon. It was formed by a subduction zone on the Pacific coast and rests in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located about 50 miles (80 km) east-southeast of Portland, on the border between Clackamas and Hood River counties. In addition to being Oregon's highest mountain, it is one of the loftiest mountains in the nation based on its prominence.
The height assigned to Mount Hood's snow-covered peak has varied over its history.
The peak is home to 12 named glaciers and snowfields. It is the highest point in Oregon and the fourth highest in the Cascade Range. Mount Hood is considered the Oregon volcano most likely to erupt, though based on its history, an explosive eruption is unlikely. Still, the odds of an eruption in the next 30 years are estimated at between 3 and 7 %, so the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) characterizes it as "potentially active", but the mountain is informally considered dormant.

The painter
Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents. He later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth.
In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. 

Full Wandering Vertextes entry  =>

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

LANDER'S PEAK PAINTED BY GEORGE-CALEB BINGHAM

GEORGE-CALEB BINGHAM (1811-1879)

Lander's Peak (3,187 m - 10,456 feet)

United States of America (Wyoming)

In Rocky Mountains , c. 1872. Oil on canvas, 14 x 18 inches. Private collection

About the painting
Fewer than half the recorded landscapes in E. Maurice Bloch’s catalogue raisonné of the paintings of George Caleb Bingham have been located, making the discovery of the unrecorded painting in Figure 1 especially noteworthy. The painting is in excellent condition, evidently having never been removed from its original frame while in the possession of descendants of a sibling of Bingham’s second wife, Eliza K. Thomas, until about 1992.
The composition reflects Bingham’s long established approach to landscape painting, derived from European sources and practices that were commonly employed by nineteenth-century American landscape painters. “Even in his mountainous landscapes, the cliffs and peaks emerge from the plane of the specta­tor and grow up structurally before his eyes. Bingham does not look down on his mountains or valleys, nor does he have them tower above the spectator in awesome grandeur.”
Rocky Mountains also employs techniques adopted by Bingham as a result of his stays in Düsseldorf in the late 1850s-clearer light, sharper edges, and more attention to detail than seen in his earlier landscapes with their vaporous passages.
The work dates to about 1872, when Bingham returned to landscape painting after abandoning the genre for most of the previous decade. His revived interest may have accompanied treatment for his chronic respiratory problems in Colorado from August through October of 1872, where the Rocky Mountains provided an opportunity to paint pan­oramic landscapes in the manner of such artists as Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt. The timing was especially attractive given the public’s fascination with the American West fueled by the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.
The relatively small painting, previously untitled, has been named Rocky Mountains to reflect its evocative connection to Bierstadt’s monumental Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak in the Metro­politan Museum of Art. Bierstadt’s painting was well known through widely distributed steel engravings , and it is reasonable to assume that Bingham himself owned a copy, since he used prints for study and the development of compo­sitional techniques throughout his career.

The mountain
Lander's Peak, is a mountain with a summit of (3,187 m - 10,456 feet) in the Wyoming Range in modern-day Wyoming. The peak was named after Frederick W. Lander on Bierstadt's initiative, after Lander's death in the Civil War. In one description of the painting, it is described as : "Sharply pointed granite peaks and fantastically illuminated clouds float above a tranquil, wooded genre scene." There are not a lot of informations about this peak, which is only the second highest peak of the Wyoming range, but was made quite famous buy Bierstadt painting.
The Wyoming Range is a mountain range located in west-central Wyoming. It is a range of the Rocky Mountains that runs north-south near the western edge of the state. Its highest peak is Wyoming Peak, which stands at (3,470 m - 11,383 feet) above sea-level. The range is sometimes referred to as The Wyomings.
The vast majority of the range is public land administered by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and is a popular destination for hiking, camping, fishing, horseback riding, snowmobiling, hunting, and other activities. The range contains numerous lakes and developed campgrounds, in addition to many wild and primitive areas. The closest towns to the range include Big Piney, Marbleton, La Barge, and Kemmerer.
A branch of the Oregon Trail known as the Lander Road traverses the mountain range. The cutoff offered emigrants a shorter travel option. Numerous grave sites and historical markers can be found relating to the trail.
The range is not to be confused with the Salt River Range, which runs closely parallel to the Wyoming Range on its western side. The two ranges are separated by Grey's River.
The United States House of Representatives voted March 25, 2009, to grant wilderness status to two million acres (8,000 km²) of public land in nine states. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which had already been passed by the Senate, was approved in the House by a 285-to-140 vote. It was signed into law March 30 by President Barack Obama. The legislation included the Wyoming Range Legacy Act, which shields 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km2) of the Wyoming Range from future oil and gas leasing. Leases that were issued in the 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km2) withdrawal area prior to passage of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act were not affected by the legislation.

The artist

George Caleb Bingham was an American artist whose paintings of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River exemplify the Luminist style. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s. By the time of his bicentennial in 2011, he was considered one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century. That year the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement Of Paintings & Drawings—directed and edited by Bingham scholar Fred R. Kline—announced the authentication of ten recently discovered paintings by Bingham. As of June 2015, a total of twenty-three  newly discovered paintings by Bingham have been authenticated and are listed with the GCBCRS. George Caleb Bingham is not famous for his mountain paintings  but mainly for a series of three paintings called The Election Series Louis and for his Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, painted circa 1845  and owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

JEBEL UWIENAT PAINTED BY SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD

SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880)

Jebel Uwienat (1,934m - 6,345ft) 

Egypt, Sudan, Lybia border

 In Siout, Egypt, 1874, oil on canvas, 53.3 x 101.6 cm, On view Gallery 67 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

About the painting
Siout, Egypt, is the most important and the finest of Gifford's dozen or so known Egyptian works and ably demonstrates his mastery of both atmospheric and linear perspective. The glowing light serves both to give tonal unity and balance to the overall composition and to reveal the myriad details of the scene with exceptional clarity. The result is a work that is less about the physical facts of the scene it depicts and more about the very act of perceiving. As one of the artist's contemporaries wrote:" Gifford's art was poetic and reminiscent. . . It was nature passed through the alembic [a device that refines or transmutes through distillation] of a finely organized sensibility. "
Although many nineteenth-century American landscape painters traveled abroad in search of subjects, Sanford Gifford was one of the very few who ventured beyond England and the Continent. Early in 1869 he traveled the Nile from Cairo to the first cataract (actually rapids) and back. On March 4 he reached the village of Siout, which lay in the midst of an extensive and fertile plain below the Libyan Hills at the start of a great caravan route running through the Libyan Desert to the Sudan. The town was known for its picturesqueness and its history, having been the capital of the thirteenth nome (province) of Upper Egypt during antiquity and the birthplace of Plotinus, the great Neoplatonic philosopher. Gifford described the view that inspired this painting in his journal : "Looking westward, the town with its domes and minarets lay between us and the sun, bathed in a rich and beautiful atmosphere. Behind, on the right, were the yellow cliffs of the Libyan Mts., running back into the tender grades of distance. Between us and the town were fields of grain, golden green with the transparent light. On the right was a tent with sheep and beautiful horses, the sunlight sparkling on a splendid white stallion. On the left the road ran in, with a fountain and figures of men and women and camels. The whole glowing and gleaming under the low sun. "
(Text by Franklin Kelly, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)


The mountain 
Jebel Uwienat (1,934m - 6,345ft) ( جبل العوينات) literally is located where three countries are meeting : Egypt, Libya and Sudan. The Qattara Depression (Munkhafaḍ al-Qaṭṭārah) of Egypt descends to 436 feet (133 metres) below sea level. Jebel Uweinat literally "mountain of springs", also spelled Al Awaynat, Auenat, Ouenat, Ouinat, Owainat, Uweinat, Uwaynat, Uweinat, Uwenat, Uweynat is a mountain range ocated in the eastern Sahara, forty kilometers south-southeast of the similar mountain range, Jebel Arkanu, in Libya.

The main source of the massif, called Ain Dua, is on its western foothills. This slope is a cliff about six hundred feet high, the foot of which is covered with voluminous rocks falling under the effect of erosion. It is home to oases covered with shrubs and grasses. In total, three valleys are oriented towards the west: Karkur Hamid, Karkur Idriss and Karkur Ibrahim. To the east, the massif ends with the Karkur Talh valley. The highest point of the massif, in its eastern half, is at the top of the Italia plateau.
The western half of the massif is an intrusion of granite forming concentric rings, the largest of which is twenty-five kilometers in diameter. The eastern half consists of sandstones forming four separate trays. Egyptian graffiti from the third millennium BCE testifies to their exploration of the region from the time of the Old Kingdom, via the track of Abu Ballas.
The massif is officially discovered in 1923 by Ahmed Hassanein who, during his exploration, reports the existence of petroglyphs representing lions, giraffes, ostriches, gazelles or oxen, in a style reminiscent of the Bushmen. He tries to cross the mountains from west to east but turns around after traveling 40 kilometers without finding an exit.
In the 1930s, Ralph A. Bagnold and Captain Marchesi each built a cairn atop the highest point of the massif.

The painter
Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint. In addition to exploring New England, upstate New York and New Jersey, Gifford made extensive trips abroad. He first traveled to Europe from 1855 to 1857, to study European art and sketch subjects for future paintings. During this trip Gifford also met Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge.
In 1858, he traveled to Vermont, "apparently" with his friend and fellow painter Jerome Thompson. Details of their visit were carried in the contemporary Home Journal. Both artists submitted paintings of Mount Mansfield, Vermont's tallest peak, to the National Academy of Design's annual show in 1859. Thompson's work, "Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain" is now owned by the MET in New York, according to the report.
Thereafter, he served in the Union Army as a corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia upon the outbreak of the Civil War. A few of his canvases belonging to New York City's Seventh Regiment and the Union League Club of New York are testament to that troubled time.
Gifford referred to the best of his landscapes as his "chief pictures". Many of his chief pictures are characterized by a hazy atmosphere with soft, suffuse sunlight. Gifford often painted a large body of water in the foreground or middle distance (see above) in which the distant landscape would be gently reflected. A catalog of his work published shortly after his death recorded in excess of 700 paintings during his career.

_________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT LAFAYETTE PAINTED BY WILLIAM TROST RICHARDS

WILLIAM TROST RICHARDS (1833-1905)
Mount Lafayette (1,600m - 5,249 ft) 

United State of America  (New Hampshire)

In Moonlight on Mount Lafayette, New Hampshire, 1873, 

Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on gray-green wove paper, 21.6 x 36 cm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

About this painting
This watercolor is one of scores that Richards painted for the Reverend Elias Magoon, a collector and writer on American scenery. In 1880, Magoon donated many of them to the Metropolitan Museum to create a Richards Gallery on the model of the Turner Gallery in London. Richards, a native of Philadelphia and a disciple of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement in the 1860s, painted the watercolor equivalents of Hudson River School oil landscapes of scenery ranging from the English and Irish coasts to the Atlantic shoreline from Massachusetts to New Jersey, and from the hills of southern Pennsylvania to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Magoon's home state. The artist, the cleric, and their wives vacationed together in the White Mountains in the summer before this watercolor was painted.

The mountain
Mount Lafayette (1,600m - 5,249 ft) is a mountain at the northern end of the Franconia Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, United States. It is located in the town of Franconia in Grafton County. It is on the New England Fifty Finest list of the most topographically prominent peaks in New England. The upper portion of the mountain is located in the alpine zone, an area where only small vegetation exists due to the harsh climate.
The mountain is named to honor General Lafayette, the famous  French military hero of the 18th century who fought with and significantly aided the Continental Army and was loved and adopted by George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. Lafayette re-visited New Hampshire and all the other states in an extremely popular, triumphal tour during 1824-1825, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Mount Lafayette is the highest point in the Franconia Range, a line of peaks along the east side of Franconia Notch. It is the sixth highest peak in New Hampshire and the highest outside of the Presidential Range. It is the second most prominent peak in the state. On the western side, its lower slopes lie inside Franconia Notch State Park. The remainder of the mountain lies within the White Mountain National Forest. The summit marks the western border of the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area within the WMNF.

The painter
William Trost Richards was born on 14 November 1833 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1846 and 1847 he attended the local Central High School. Between 1850 and 1855 he studied part-time with the German artist Paul Weber while working as designer and illustrator of ornamental metalwork. Richards first public exhibit was part of an exhibition in New Bedford, Massachusetts, organized by artist Albert Bierstadt in 1858.
In 1862 he was elected honorary member of the National Academy of Design, and was elected as an Academician in 1871. In 1863, he became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art. In 1866, he departed for Europe for one year. Upon his return and for the following six years he spent the summers on the East Coast.
In the 1870s, he produced many acclaimed watercolor views of the White Mountains, several of which are now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Richards exhibited at the National Academy of Design from 1861 to 1899, and at the Brooklyn Art Association from 1863 to 1885. He was elected a full member of the National Academy in 1871.
In 1881 he built a house in Jamestown, Rhode Island, where he lived and worked the remainder of his life. He died on April 17, 1905 in Newport, Rhode Island.
Richards rejected the romanticized and stylized approach of other Hudson River painters and instead insisted on meticulous factual renderings. His views of the White Mountains are almost photographic in their realism. In later years, Richards painted almost exclusively marine watercolors.
His works are featured today in many important American museums, including the National Gallery, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fogg Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Berkshire Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE WHITES PAINTED BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

 ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902) 

White Mountains  (1,917m - 6,288ft) 

United States of America  (New Hampshire) 

In  Turbulent Clouds, White Mountains, New Hampshire,  oil on canvas, 1858 

The mountain 

The White Mountains also called The Whites are a mountain range covering about a quarter of the state of New Hampshire and a small portion of western Maine in the United States. They are part of the northern Appalachian Mountains and the most rugged mountains in New England. The range is heavily visited due to its proximity to Boston and, to a lesser extent, New York City and Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Most of the area is public land, including the White Mountain National Forest and a number of state parks. Its most famous mountain is  (1,917 m- 6,288-ft) Mount Washington, which is the highest peak in the Northeastern U.S. and for 76 years held the record for fastest surface wind gust in the world (231 miles per hour (372 km/h) in 1934 . 

The White Mountains also include the Franconia Range, Sandwich Range, Carter-Moriah Range and Kinsman Range in New Hampshire, and the Mahoosuc Range straddling the border between it and Maine. In all, there are 48 peaks within New Hampshire as well as one (Old Speck Mountain) in Maine over 4,000 feet (1,200 m), known as the four-thousand footers.

The Whites are known for a system of alpine huts for hikers operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club. The Appalachian Trail crosses the area from southwest to northeast.

The painter 

Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents. He later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth. 

In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.

In 1858 he exhibited a large painting of a Swiss landscape at the National Academy of Design, which gained him positive critical reception and honorary membership in the Academy.  At this time Bierstadt began painting scenes in New England and upstate New York, including in the Hudson River valley. A group of artists known as the Hudson River School portrayed its majestic landscapes and craggy areas, as well as the light affected by the changing waters.

In 1859, Bierstadt traveled westward in the company of Frederick W. Lander, a land surveyor for the U.S. government, to see those landscapes.  He continued to visit the American West throughout his career.

During the American Civil War, Bierstadt paid for a substitute to serve in his place when he was drafted in 1863. He completed one Civil War painting Guerrilla Warfare, Civil War in 1862, based on his brief experiences with soldiers stationed at Camp Cameron in 1861.

Bierstadt's painting was based on a stereoscopic photograph taken by his brother Edward Bierstadt, who operated a photography studio at Langley's Tavern in Virginia. Bierstadt's painting received a positive review when it was exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 1861. Curator Eleanor Jones Harvey observes that Bierstadt's painting, created from photographs, "is quintessentially that of a voyeur, privy to the stories and unblemished by the violence and brutality of first-hand combat experience."

In 1860, he was elected a member of the National Academy; he received medals in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, and Germany.[ In 1867 he traveled to London, where he exhibited two landscape paintings in a private reception with Queen Victoria. He traveled through Europe for two years, cultivating social and business contacts to sustain the market for his work overseas.

As a result of the publicity generated by his Yosemite paintings, Bierstadt's presence was requested by every explorer considering a westward expedition, and he was commissioned by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad to visit the Grand Canyon for further subject matter.

Bierstadt's technical proficiency, earned through his study of European landscape, was crucial to his success as a painter of the American West. It accounted for his popularity in disseminating views of the Rockies to those who had not seen them. The immense canvases he produced after his trips with Lander and Ludlow established him as the preeminent painter of the western American landscape. 

Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for the romanticism evident in his choices of subject and his use of light was felt to be excessive. 

In 1882 Bierstadt's studio at Irvington, New York, was destroyed by fire, resulting in the loss of many of his paintings. By the time of his death on February 18, 1902, the taste for epic landscape painting had long since subsided. Bierstadt was then largely forgotten. He was buried at the Rural Cemetery in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Interest in his work was renewed in the 1960s, with the exhibition of his small oil studies. The subsequent reassessment of Bierstadt's work has placed it in a favorable context.

Bierstadt's theatrical art, fervent sociability, international outlook, and unquenchable personal energy reflected the epic expansion in every facet of western civilization during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Bierstadt was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 paintings during his lifetime. Many of these are held by museums across the United States.

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT WAHINGTON OR AGIOCOCHOOK BY SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD

SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880)

Mount Washington or Agiocochook  (1,916 m- 6,288 ft)

United States of America 

 In Indian Summer in the White Mountains, oil on canvas, 1862, Mint Museum of Art

The mountain 

Mount Washington (1,916 m- 6,288 ft), called Agiocochook by some Native American tribes, is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at  and the most topographically prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. The mountain is located in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, in the township of Sargent's Purchase, in Coös County, New Hampshire. While nearly the whole mountain is in the White Mountain National Forest, an area of 60.3 acres (24.4 ha) surrounding and including the summit is occupied by Mount Washington State Park.

The mountain is notorious for its erratic weather. On the afternoon of April 12, 1934, the Mount Washington Observatory recorded a windspeed of 231 miles per hour (372 km/h) at the summit, the world record for most of the 20th century, and still a record for measured wind speeds not involved with a tropical cyclone.

The Mount Washington Cog Railway ascends the western slope of the mountain, and the Mount Washington Auto Road climbs to the summit from the east. The mountain is visited by hikers, and the Appalachian Trail crosses the summit. Other common activities include glider flying, backcountry skiing, and annual cycle and running races such as the Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb and Road Race.

The painter 
Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint. In addition to exploring New England, upstate New York and New Jersey, Gifford made extensive trips abroad. He first traveled to Europe from 1855 to 1857, to study European art and sketch subjects for future paintings. During this trip Gifford also met Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge.
In 1858, he traveled to Vermont, "apparently" with his friend and fellow painter Jerome Thompson. Details of their visit were carried in the contemporary Home Journal. Both artists submitted paintings of Mount Mansfield, Vermont's tallest peak, to the National Academy of Design's annual show in 1859. Thompson's work, "Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain" is now owned by the MET in New York, according to the report.
Thereafter, he served in the Union Army as a corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia upon the outbreak of the Civil War. A few of his canvases belonging to New York City's Seventh Regiment and the Union League Club of New York are testament to that troubled time.
Gifford referred to the best of his landscapes as his "chief pictures". Many of his chief pictures are characterized by a hazy atmosphere with soft, suffuse sunlight. Gifford often painted a large body of water in the foreground or middle distance (see above) in which the distant landscape would be gently reflected. A catalog of his work published shortly after his death recorded in excess of 700 paintings during his career.

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau