LE GRAND CANYON PEINT PAR WAYNE THIEBAUD

WAYNE THIEBAUD (1920-2021)
Grand Canyon of Colorado (1300m)
Etats-Unis (Arizona)

In Canyon Pass, 2019, huile sur toile 60 x 60 inches

 

Le peintre
Morton Wayne Thiebaud était un peintre américain connu pour ses œuvres colorées représentant des objets du quotidien  - tartes, rouges à lèvres, pots de peinture, cornets de crème glacée, pâtisseries et hot-dogs - ainsi que pour ses paysages et ses peintures de personnages. Thiebaud est associé au mouvement pop art en raison de son intérêt pour les objets de la culture de masse, bien que ses premières œuvres, exécutées dans les années cinquante et soixante, soient antérieures aux œuvres des artistes pop classiques. Thiebaud a utilisé des pigments lourds et des couleurs exagérées pour représenter ses sujets, et les ombres bien définies caractéristiques des publicités sont presque toujours incluses dans son travail.
Thiebaud était opposé aux étiquettes telles que « beaux-arts » par opposition à « art commercial » et se décrivait comme « juste un peintre à l'ancienne ». Il n'aimait pas les peintures "plates" et "mécaniques" d'Andy Warhol et ne se considérait pas comme un artiste pop.
En plus des pâtisseries, Thiebaud a peint des personnages tels que Mickey Mouse ainsi que des paysages, des paysages de rue et des paysages urbains, qui ont été influencés par le travail de Richard Diebenkorn. Ses peintures telles que Sunset Streets (1985) et Flatland River (1997) sont réputées pour leur hyper réalisme et ont été comparées au travail d'Edward Hopper, un autre artiste fasciné par les scènes banales de la vie quotidienne américaine.
En 1962, le travail de Thiebaud a été inclus, avec Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine et Robert Dowd, dans la "Nouvelle peinture d'objets communs" historiquement importante et révolutionnaire organisée au Pasadena Art Museum. Cette exposition est considérée comme l'une des premières expositions de Pop Art aux États-Unis. Ces peintres faisaient partie d'un nouveau mouvement, à une époque de troubles sociaux, qui a choqué les États-Unis et le monde de l'art.

Le relief
Le Grand Canyon (1500m de profondeur) ou Grand Cañon, en anglais Grand Canyon, en hopi Ongtupqa, en yavapai Wi:kaʼi:la, est un canyon des États-Unis situé dans le Nord-Ouest de l'Arizona. La gorge a été creusée par le fleuve Colorado dans le plateau du même nom et l'empilement de couches géologiques de Grand Staircase. Fondé en 1919, le parc national du Grand Canyon couvre un territoire protégé de 4 927 km2. Il est fréquenté chaque année par plus de quatre millions et demi de visiteurs. La diversité et la singularité naturelle et paysagère du site l'ont fait reconnaître patrimoine mondial de l’Humanité par l’UNESCO en 1979. Les dimensions du Grand Canyon sont gigantesques, d'où son nom (en anglais, grand ne signifie pas grand, mais à la fois immense, imposant, grandiose et superbe). Il s'étend sur environ 450 km de long entre le lac Powell et le lac Mead, dont 350 km sont situés dans le parc national. Sa profondeur moyenne est de 1 300 mètres, avec un maximum de plus de 1 600 mètres. Sa largeur varie de 5,5 km à 30 km.
Le Grand Canyon n'est ni le plus profond, ni le plus imposant des canyons terrestres : le canyon de Colca (3 400 m de profondeur) et le canyon de Cotahuasi (3 550 mètres de profondeur) au Pérou, le canyon du Yarlung Tsangpo en Chine, le Barranca del Cobre au nord du Mexique et le Hells Canyon dans l'Idaho sont des gorges plus profondes. Le site est cependant remarquable pour les points de vue offerts aux visiteurs et pour les couches géologiques qui apparaissent sur les versants du canyon, bien connus des géologues. Les strates racontent l'histoire du continent nord-américain. D'autre part, l'endroit est le résultat spectaculaire du travail de l'érosion, notamment celle du fleuve Colorado qui coule en contrebas. Quarante-cinq tremblements de terre ont affecté le Grand Canyon ou sa région au cours du xxe siècle : cinq ont atteint des magnitudes comprises entre 5 et 6 sur l'échelle de Richter
Aujourd'hui, il n'existe plus de volcan actif dans la région du Grand Canyon. Les dernières laves datent d'environ dix mille ans. La dernière éruption du Sunset Crater, situé au sud du Grand Canyon a eu lieu vers 1100.La présence de nombreuses failles témoignent de l'activité tectonique qui a affecté et affecte encore la région du Grand Canyon. La faille de Bright Angel Fault traverse le canyon entre Grand Canyon Village vers la rive nord.
Une passerelle en verre appelée « Grand Canyon Skywalk » a été inaugurée le 20 mars 2007 à Grand Canyon West. Elle permet aux visiteurs de se trouver 1 300 mètres au-dessus du vide. Elle a été en partie financée par David Jin, un homme d'affaires de Las Vegas. L'ouvrage ne relie pas les deux rives du canyon mais forme une petite boucle qui s'avance de 22 mètres en aplomb du Colorado. La plate-forme pèse 500 tonnes. Elle est capable de supporter le poids de plusieurs centaines de personnes tout en étant exposée aux vents. Le projet a été décidé par la tribu Hualapai pour des raisons économiques. L'entrée de base coûte 76 dollars (soit environ 56 €), elle comprend le trajet en bus et les droits d'entrée (environ 46 dollars) et l'accès à la passerelle (environ 30 dollars) . Les photos sont interdites sur la passerelle.

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

LE BAOU DE SAINT-JEANNET PEINT PAR FÉLIX VALOTTON

FÉLIX VALOTTON (1865-1925)
Le Baou de Saint-Jeannet  (802m)
France (Provence)

In Paysage à Saint-Jeannet, Provence (1922)

La montagne
Le baou de Saint-Jeannet (802m) est une montagne ce qui signifie d'ailleurslocalement le nom baou. Il est situé dans les Préalpes de Grasse, sur le territoire de la commune de Saint-Jeannet, dans le département des Alpes-Maritimes. Le baou a la particularité d'être visible depuis une très large portion de la zone côtière de la région niçoise, et de présenter des falaises calcaires abruptes et largement reconnaissables, ce qui en fait un point de repère visuel typique de la région. C'est un lieu réputé pour la randonnée et pour l'escalade rocheuse, où de grands noms de ce sport se sont succédé. Ce territoire occupé par l'homme dès le Paléolithique, accrochant le regard, a par la suite inspiré de nombreux peintres, dès le 17e siècle. Le Baou est un site d'escalade renommé, avec 470 voies réparties sur 17 secteurs. Les cotations des voies vont du 3a au 8a+. L'escalade sur le Baou a commencé à se populariser durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. En effet, l'accès aux vallées du massif du Mercantour étant fermé, les alpinistes de la région niçoise s’entraînent sur le Baou. Il dispose de plusieurs secteurs équipés de voies de type « couenne », comme celui des Sources, de la Cagnes, ou encore les différents Ressaut. De plus, le baou est réputé pour toutes les grandes voies que l'on trouve sur la Grande Falaise. Ces grandes voies possèdent des équipements anciens, de type terrain d'aventure, donc à compléter par la cordée. On peut pratiquer de l'escalade sur de la fissure-dièdre, de la dalle, des colonnettes, et le Baou dispose de murs verticaux, tout comme de dévers, surplombs et même des toits. Au 21e siècle des voies d'ampleur continuent d'être ouvertes au baou, comme par exemple Petit toi mystérieux, ouverte en 2017 par Thomas Arfi, Stéphane Benoist et Benjamin Guigonnet. Une partie du secteur des Sources est sous surveillance depuis 2022 à la suite de l'effondrement d'un rocher d'une centaine de tonnes.


Le peintre
Félix Edouard Valotton était un peintre et graveur franco-suisse associé (à partir de 1892) aux Nabis, groupe de jeunes artistes qui comprenait Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis et Edouard Vuillard, avec qui Vallotton devait former relation amicale. qui dura toute sa vie. Au cours des années 1890, alors que Vallotton était étroitement lié à l'avant-garde, ses peintures reflétaient le style de ses gravures sur bois, avec des aplats de couleur, des bords durs et une simplification des détails. Ses sujets comprenaient des scènes de genre, des portraits et des nus. Des exemples de son style nabi sont ces Baigneurs un soir d'été (1892-1893), aujourd'hui Kunsthaus de Zurich, ets on très symboliste Clair de lune (1895), au musée d'Orsay, Paris. Les peintures de Vallotton de la période post-nabi sont g appréciées pour leur véracité et leurs qualités techniques, bien que la sévérité du style soit fréquemment critiquée. Ainsi la réaction de ce critique qui, dans le numéro du 23 mars 1910 de la Neue Zurcher Zeitung, se plaint que Vallotton « peint comme un policier, comme quelqu'un dont le travail consiste simplement à saisir les formes et les couleurs. Tout grince avec une sécheresse intolérable. .. les couleurs manquent de gaieté." Avec son caractère intransigeant, son art préfigure la Nouvelle Objectivité qui s'épanouit en Allemagne dans les années 1920, et trouve un autre parallèle dans l'œuvre d'Edward Hopper.


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

HALF DOME PEINT PAR WAYNE THIEBAUD

 

WAYNE THIEBAUD (1920-2021)
Half Dome (2, 695 m - 8,844 ft)
United States of America (California)

In Yosemite Rock Formation, Memory Mountains  huile sur toile 80,x 60 cm, 2012

A propos de la série Memory Mountains
Memory Mountains, se compose de 31 peintures et 17 œuvres sur papier qui occupe les deux étages de la Galerie Paul Thiebaud. à San Fransisco. A propos de la peinture de montagnes Watne Thiebaud au Hufftington Post :  " Un jour je me suis demandé ce qui se passerait si on essayait de voir les montagnes sous un autre angle que l'angle habituel.   En effet, en peinture,  nous les voyons le plus souvent  de loin, à moins que nous ne les escaladions. Face à cette tendance à toujours représenter les montagnes vues de loin, j'ai pris le parti dans ma série Memory Mountains,  de m'en rapprocher le plus possible pour les peindre. "

 

La montagne
Half Dome (2 695 m - 8 844 pieds) est un dôme de granit situé à l'extrémité est de la vallée de Yosemite dans le parc national de Yosemite, en Californie, qui fait partie de la chaîne de montagnes de la Sierra Nevada. C'est une formation rocheuse bien connue dans le parc, nommée pour sa forme particulière la faisant apparaître comme un dôme coupé en deux. La crête de granit s'élève à plus de 4 737 pieds (1 444 m) au-dessus du fond de la vallée. L'impression ressentie du fond de la vallée qu'il s'agit d'un dôme rond qui a perdu sa moitié nord-ouest est une illusion. De Washburn Point, Half Dome peut être vu comme une mince crête de roche, une arête orientée nord-est-sud-ouest, avec son côté sud-est presque aussi raide que son côté nord-ouest à l'exception du sommet. Jusque dans les années 1870, Half Dome était décrit comme "parfaitement inaccessible" par Josiah Whitney du California Geological Survey. Le sommet a finalement été conquis par George G. Anderson en octobre 1875, via un itinéraire élaboé en forant et en plaçant des boulons en fer dans le granit lisse.
Aujourd'hui, Half Dome peut  être escaladé de plusieurs manières différentes. Des milliers de randonneurs atteignent le sommet chaque année en suivant un sentier de 13,7 km depuis le fond de la vallée. Après une approche rigoureuse de 3,2 km (2 mi), comprenant plusieurs centaines de pieds d'escaliers en granit, la pente finale de la face est escarpée mais quelque peu arrondie du pic est montée à l'aide d'une paire de câbles en acier tressé montés sur poteau construits à l'origine près de la route Anderson en 1919.
Plus d'une douzaine de voies d'escalade mènent de la vallée à la face verticale nord-ouest du Half Dome. La première ascension technique a eu lieu en 1957 via un itinéraire lancé par Royal Robbins, Mike Sherrick et Jerry Gallwas, aujourd'hui connu sous le nom de Regular Northwest Face. Leur épopée de cinq jours a été la première ascension de grade VI aux États-Unis. Leur route a maintenant été parcourue en solo plusieurs fois en quelques heures.

 Le peintre
Morton Wayne Thiebaud était un peintre américain connu pour ses œuvres colorées représentant des objets du quotidien  - tartes, rouges à lèvres, pots de peinture, cornets de crème glacée, pâtisseries et hot-dogs - ainsi que pour ses paysages et ses peintures de personnages. Thiebaud est associé au mouvement pop art en raison de son intérêt pour les objets de la culture de masse, bien que ses premières œuvres, exécutées dans les années cinquante et soixante, soient antérieures aux œuvres des artistes pop classiques. Thiebaud a utilisé des pigments lourds et des couleurs exagérées pour représenter ses sujets, et les ombres bien définies caractéristiques des publicités sont presque toujours incluses dans son travail.
Thiebaud était opposé aux étiquettes telles que « beaux-arts » par opposition à « art commercial » et se décrivait comme « juste un peintre à l'ancienne ». Il n'aimait pas les peintures "plates" et "mécaniques" d'Andy Warhol et ne se considérait pas comme un artiste pop.
En plus des pâtisseries, Thiebaud a peint des personnages tels que Mickey Mouse ainsi que des paysages, des paysages de rue et des paysages urbains, qui ont été influencés par le travail de Richard Diebenkorn. Ses peintures telles que Sunset Streets (1985) et Flatland River (1997) sont réputées pour leur hyper réalisme et ont été comparées au travail d'Edward Hopper, un autre artiste fasciné par les scènes banales de la vie quotidienne américaine.
En 1962, le travail de Thiebaud a été inclus, avec Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine et Robert Dowd, dans la "Nouvelle peinture d'objets communs" historiquement importante et révolutionnaire organisée au Pasadena Art Museum. Cette exposition est considérée comme l'une des premières expositions de Pop Art aux États-Unis. Ces peintres faisaient partie d'un nouveau mouvement, à une époque de troubles sociaux, qui a choqué les États-Unis et le monde de l'art.

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

LA DENT DU BOURGO PEINTE PAR FÉLIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON  (1865-1925)
La Dent du Bourgo (1,908m)
Suisse (Gruyère)

In La Dent du Bourgoz, aquarelle, 1905 

La montagne
La Dent du Bourgo  ou du Bourgoz (1,908m) est un sommet des Préalpes fribourgeoises située en Suisse, dans le canton de Fribourg. La Dent du Bourgo culmine à l'est de Gruyères.  C'est la 3ème et dernière de la fourchette de l’Intyamon. La première étant la Dent de Broc et la deuxième la Dent du Chamoix.La Dent du Bourgo offre une  randonnée relativement facile d’un point de vue technique mais qui fait tout de même presque 6 km et 800 m de dénivelé. Il faut compter environ 2h30 pour arriver à son sommet. Depuis sa croix métallique, on peut admirer les deux autres dents ainsi qu’un petit coin du lac de la Gruyère.

Le peintre
Félix Edouard Vallotton était un peintre et graveur franco-suisse associé (à partir de 1892) aux Nabis, groupe de jeunes artistes qui comprenait Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis et Edouard Vuillard, avec qui Vallotton devait former relation amicale. qui dura toute sa vie. Au cours des années 1890, alors que Vallotton était étroitement lié à l'avant-garde, ses peintures reflétaient le style de ses gravures sur bois, avec des aplats de couleur, des bords durs et une simplification des détails. Ses sujets comprenaient des scènes de genre, des portraits et des nus. Des exemples de son style nabi sont ces Baigneurs un soir d'été (1892-1893), aujorud'hui Kunsthaus de Zurich, ets on très  symboliste Clair de lune (1895), au musée d'Orsay, Paris. Les peintures de Vallotton de la période post-nabi sont g appréciées pour leur véracité et leurs qualités techniques, bien que  la sévérité du style soit fréquemment critiquée. Ainsi la réaction de ce critique qui, dans le numéro du 23 mars 1910 de la Neue Zurcher Zeitung, se plaint que Vallotton « peint comme un policier, comme quelqu'un dont le travail consiste simplement à saisir les formes et les couleurs. Tout grince avec une sécheresse intolérable. .. les couleurs manquent de gaieté." Avec son caractère intransigeant, son art préfigure la Nouvelle Objectivité qui s'épanouit en Allemagne dans les années 1920, et trouve un autre parallèle dans l'œuvre d'Edward Hopper.

_________________________________________

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

THE CERVIN / MATTERHORN PAINTED BY FELIX VALOTTON

 

FELIX VALOTTON (1865-1925)
Cervin / Matterhorn (4,478m -14,691ft)
Switzerland - Italy border

In  Zermatt et le Cervin /Matterhorn

The mountain
The Mont Cervin (4,478m -14,691ft) also known as the Matterhorn is an alpine summit located on the Swiss-Italian border between the canton of Valais and the Aosta Valley in Switzerland. It has several other names: Cervino in Italian, Grand'Bèca in Arpitan, Matterhorn in German. The Cervin / Matterhorn is the most famous mountain in Switzerland, including the pyramidal shape that it offers from the village of Zermatt, in the German-speaking part of the canton of Valais.
Its four sides are joined about 400 meters below the summit in a summit pyramid, called "roof." Its summit is a broad ridge about two meters, on which stand actually two summits: one called "Swiss summit," the farther east, and the "Italian summit" slightly lower (4,476 meters), on the west side of the ridge. The two are separated by a notch in the hollow of which a cross was laid in September 1901.


The painter
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."
In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BLACKHEAD PAINTED BY EDWARD HOPPER

 

EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967)

Blackhead (50 m-150 ft) 

United States of America (Maine)

1. In Blackhead, Monhegan, 1916-19,oil on canvas,  Whitney Museum of American Art, 

The mountain 

Blackhead (50m-150 ft) are northside cliffs situated on Monhegan, Manana Island, that have drawn the interest of  many artists.  The beginnings of the art colony on Monhegan date to the mid-19th century; by 1890, it was firmly established. Two of the early artists in residence from the 1890s, William Henry Singer (1868–1943) and Martin Borgord (1869–1935), left Monhegan to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1901. Among many early members who found inspiration on the island were summer visitors from the New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, such as Robert Henri, Frederick Waugh, George Bellows, Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent. The Monhegan Museum celebrated more the continuing draw of the island for artists in a 2014 exhibit entitled, “The Famous and the Forgotten: Revisiting Monhegan’s Celebrated 1914 Art Exhibition.

Monhegan is a plantation in Lincoln County, Maine, United States, about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off the mainland. The population was 75 at the 2000 census. The plantation comprises its namesake island and the uninhabited neighboring island of Manana. The island is accessible by scheduled boat service from Boothbay Harbor, New Harbor and Port Clyde. It was designated a National Natural Landmark for its coastal and island flora in 1966.[

The name Monhegan derives from Monchiggon, Algonquian for "out-to-sea island." European explorers Martin Pring visited in 1603, Samuel de Champlain in 1604, George Weymouth in 1605 and Captain John Smith in 1614. The island got its start as a British fishing camp prior to settlement of the Plymouth Colony. Cod was harvested from the rich fishing grounds of the Gulf of Maine, then dried on fish flakes before shipment to Europe. A trading post was built to conduct business with the Indians, particularly in the lucrative fur trade.  It was Monhegan traders who taught English to Samoset, the sagamore who in 1621 startled the Pilgrims by boldly walking into their new village at Plymouth and saying: "Welcome, Englishmen." 

The painter
Edward Hopper was a American realist painter and printmaker.

Conservative in politics and social matters (Hopper asserted for example that "artists' lives should be written by people very close to them"), he accepted things as they were and displayed a lack of idealism. Cultured and sophisticated, he was well-read, and many of his paintings show figures reading. He was generally good company and unperturbed by silences, though sometimes taciturn, grumpy, or detached. He was always serious about his art and the art of others, and when asked would return frank opinions.

Hopper's most systematic declaration of his philosophy as an artist was given in a handwritten note, entitled "Statement", submitted in 1953 to the journal, Reality:

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.

The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.

The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great."

 
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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

EL CAPITAN PAINTED BY WAYNE THIEBAUD

WAYNE THIEBAUD (1920-2021)
El Capitan (2,309m - 7,573 ft)
United States of America

 In Mount and Cloud, 1972, oil on canvas 20 1/4 x 22 in.

 
The painter
Morton Wayne Thiebaud was an American painter known for his colorful works depicting commonplace objects—pies, lipsticks, paint cans, ice cream cones, pastries, and hot dogs—as well as for his landscapes and figure paintings. Thiebaud is associated with the pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his early works, executed during the fifties and sixties, predate the works of the classic pop artists. Thiebaud used heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work.
Thiebaud was averse to labels such as "fine art" versus "commercial art" and described himself as "just an old-fashioned painter". He disliked Andy Warhol's "flat" and "mechanical" paintings and did not consider himself a pop artist.
In addition to pastries, Thiebaud painted characters such as Mickey Mouse as well as landscapes, streetscapes, and cityscapes, which were influenced by the work of Richard Diebenkorn. His paintings such as Sunset Streets (1985) and Flatland River (1997) are noted for their hyper realism, and have been compared to Edward Hopper's work, another artist who was fascinated with mundane scenes from everyday American life.
In 1962, Thiebaud's work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, and Robert Dowd, in the historically important and ground-breaking "New Painting of Common Objects" curated at the Pasadena Art Museum.  This exhibition is considered to have been one of the first Pop Art exhibitions in the United States. These painters were part of a new movement, in a time of social unrest, which shocked the U.S. and the art world.

The mountain
El Capitan (2,309m - 7,573 ft) is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, located on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The granite monolith extends about 3,000 feet (900 m) from base to summit along its tallest face and is one of the world's favorite challenges for rock climbers.
The formation was named "El Capitan" by the Mariposa Battalion when it explored the valley in 1851. El Capitan ("the captain") was taken to be a loose Spanish translation of the local Native American name for the cliff, variously transcribed as "To-to-kon oo-lah" or "To-tock-ah-noo-lah".
It is unclear if the Native American name referred to a specific tribal chief or simply meant "the chief" or "rock chief". In modern times, the formation's name is often contracted to "El Cap", especially among rock climbers and BASE jumpers.
The top of El Capitan can be reached by hiking out of Yosemite Valley on the trail next to Yosemite Falls, then proceeding west. For climbers, the challenge is to climb up the sheer granite face. There are many named climbing routes, all of them arduous, including Iron Hawk and Sea of Dreams, for example.
The Nose was first climbed in 1958 by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore in 47 days using "siege" tactics: climbing in an expedition style using fixed ropes along the length of the route, linking established camps along the way.
In September 1973, Beverly Johnson and Sibylle Hechtel were the first team of women to ascend El Capitan via the Triple Direct route.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

FALAISE DES VACHES NOIRES PAINTED BY GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE

 

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894)
Falaise des Vaches Noires (110 m- 360 ft)
France (Normandie)

 In Cliffs at Villers sur mer 1880, 65 x 81 cm, Private collection

The cliffs
The Vaches Noires cliffs (Black Cows Cliffs)  (110 m- 360 ft)  is a remarkable natural site located in the municipalities of Houlgate, Gonneville-sur-Mer, Auberville, Villers-sur-Mer, in Calvados, in Normandy (France). The toponym "Black Cows" designates blocks of chalk having rolled from the top of the cliff on the foreshore, the black color of which is due to the kelp having attached itself to it.The Vaches Noires cliffs are made up of clay cliffs capped at their summit (altitude 110 m) with a thin chalk cliff.

This area is geologically remarkable. The Oxfordian marls, under the action of the water runoff from the aquifer which surmounts them, are notched by deep ravines. These are traversed by mud flows which advance slowly towards the sea and contain blocks of Cretaceous chalk coming from the summit. At high tide, the waves attack the front of the lava flows, releasing extremely varied fossils. The cliffs are made up of a succession of layers of clay, marl and chalk. Due to the risk of landslide and the fragility of the clay cliffs, the cliffs are now protected, their access has been prohibited by decree of classification as a "site of scientific and landscaped interest in the Calvados department" of 20 February 1995 from theFrench Ministry of the Environment.

The painter
The very important french painter Gustave Caillebotte, (known in US more than his own country) was a member and patron of the artists known as Impressionists,(or independents) although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Caillebotte was noted for his early interest in photography as an art form.
With regard to the composition and painting style of his works, Caillebotte may be considered part of the first movement after Impressionism: Neo-Impressionism. The second period of Pointillism, whose main representative was Georges Seurat, announced its influence in the late works that Caillebotte painted at his country house in Petit Gennevilliers.
Caillebotte's style belongs to the School of Realism but was strongly influenced by his Impressionist associates. In common with his precursors Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet, as well his contemporary Degas, Caillebotte aimed to paint reality as it existed and as he saw it, hoping to reduce the inherent theatricality of painting. Perhaps because of his close relationship with so many of his peers, his style and technique vary considerably among his works, as if "borrowing" and experimenting, but not really sticking to any one style. At times, he seems very much in the Edgar Degas camp of rich-colored realism (especially his interior scenes); at other times, he shares the Impressionist commitment to "optical truth" and employs an impressionistic pastel-softness and loose brush strokes most similar to Renoir and Pissarro, although with a less vibrant palette.
The tilted ground common to these paintings is very characteristic of Caillebotte's work, which may have been strongly influenced by Japanese prints and the new technology of photography, although evidence of his use of photography is lacking. Cropping and "zooming-in", techniques that commonly are found in Caillebotte's oeuvre, may also be the result of his interest in photography, but may just as likely be derived from his intense interest in perspective effects. A large number of Caillebotte's works also employ a very high vantage point, including View of Rooftops - Snow (Vue de toits (Effet de neige) 1878, Boulevard Seen from Above (Boulevard vu d'en haut) 1880, and A Traffic Island (Un refuge, boulevard Haussmann), 1880.
Caillebotte is best known for his paintings of still life, water sports and urban Paris, The latter is almost unique among his works for its particularly flat colors and photo-realistic effect, which give the painting its distinctive and modern look, almost akin to American Realists such as Edward Hopper.

___________________________________________
2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BLAKCHEAD / MONHEGAN PAINTED BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

 

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947)

Blackhead (50 m-150 ft) 

United States of America (Maine)

In Monhegan, Maine From Ocean series,  1922, Roerich Museum NYC

The rock
Blackhead (50m-150 ft) are northside cliffs situated on Monhegan, Manana Island, that have drawn the interest of many artists. The beginnings of the art colony on Monhegan date to the mid-19th century; by 1890, it was firmly established. Two of the early artists in residence from the 1890s, William Henry Singer (1868–1943) and Martin Borgord (1869–1935), left Monhegan to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1901. Among many early members who found inspiration on the island were summer visitors from the New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, such as Robert Henri, Frederick Waugh, George Bellows, Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent. The Monhegan Museum celebrated more the continuing draw of the island for artists in a 2014 exhibit entitled, “The Famous and the Forgotten: Revisiting Monhegan’s Celebrated 1914 Art Exhibition."
Monhegan is a plantation in Lincoln County, Maine, United States, about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off the mainland. The population was 75 at the 2000 census. The plantation comprises its namesake island and the uninhabited neighboring island of Manana. The island is accessible by scheduled boat service from Boothbay Harbor, New Harbor and Port Clyde. It was designated a National Natural Landmark for its coastal and island flora in 1966.

The painter
Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих) is quite an important figure of mountain paintings in the early 20th century. He was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure. In his youth was he was quite influenced by a movement in Russian society around the occult and was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices. His paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.

More about the painter =>

_______________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

GLACIER DU RHONE / RHONEGLETSCHER BY FELIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON (1865-1925),
Rhone Glacier / Rhonegletscher (3,600/2,500m -
Switzerland

In Glacier du Rhône, woodcut, 1892

About the work

Those very famous woodcuts and  illustrations in black and white brings to the young Swiss painter Felix Valotton an international fame. In 1891, he literally renewed the art of xylography following the publication of an article by Albert Aurier, "Le Symbolisme en peinture", calling for an "idealistic" and decorative art, from which would be banished "Concrete truth, illusionism, trompe-l'oeil". The engravings that Valotton show in 1892 made such a sensation that he was invited to take part in various shows (Salon des artistes français, Salon des indépendants, Salon d'automne).

In the begining of 1892 Valotton engraved on wood a series of mountains from the French and Swiss Alps, which he exhibited at the first Salon de la Rose-Croix in 1892. They were immediately noticed by the Nabis, a group he rallied from 1893 to 1903 before making a long friendship with Édouard Vuillard.

The Glacier
The Rhône glacier (Rhonegletscher or Rottengletscher in German) is located at the north-eastern end of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It gives birth to the Rhone, upstream of Gletsch, which flows then into the valley of Conches.
The Rhône glacier begins on the southwestern face of the Dammastock massif at an altitude of about 3,600 meters. The first 2,500 meters of the glacier consists of a firn, the Eggfirn, which undergoes a difference of 600 meters. At an altitude of 3,081 meters, the glacier is connected to the Trift Glacier by a small pass, the Undri Triftlimi. This other glacier flows north on the Bernese territory towards the Susten pass. The Rhône glacier then follows a gentler slope with a gradient of about 14% towards the south. It is bordered on the east by the Galenstock (3,586 m), and on the west by the Tieralplistock (3,383 m) and the Gärstenhörner Bar (3,189 m). The glacial tongue ends at an altitude of about 2,250 m1 and gives birth to the Rhone.
The Rhône glacier is one of the most studied glaciers in the Alps. In 1546, Sebastian Münster described it in his book Cosmographia Universalis5. The erratic blocks of the Swiss plateau with their imposing mass could not have been brought by the force of the water and it is this observation which pushed the scientists to take a closer interest in the alpine glaciers, thus establishing the bases of the glaciology. Louis Agassiz was one of the leading pioneers in the field and studied among others the Rhone glacier.
The first measurements on the Rhone glacier date back to 18746, thanks to the work of engineer Philipp Gosset. Since this year, the length, thickness of the ice and other observations are carefully recorded.  Its thickness decreases annually by 25 centimeters.
 
The painter 

Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."

In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.

______________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

VESUVIUS PAINTED BY GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE  (1848-1894) 

Vesuvius  (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

In Sur une route à Naples (c. 1872), Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 cm. Private Collection

About the painting

The mountain was not, strictly speaking, Caillebotte's main subject of interest ! He painted very little, (not to say) no mountains! The canvas above is his only known example and still represents a mountain (the Vesuvius) seized as by accident while he wants especially to paint the horse-drawn car which led him in this  Neapolitan  campaign to observe this most famous volcano under a nes angle. The result is a masterwork  with this unexpected view of the volcano ! 

The mountain 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. 

It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.

Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.

Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.

Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.

he area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.

There is access by road to within 200 metres (660 ft) of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the mountain from the road to the crater.

The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.

The painter
The very important french painter Gustave Caillebotte, (known in US more than his own country) was a member and patron of the artists known as Impressionists,(or independents) although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Caillebotte was noted for his early interest in photography as an art form.
With regard to the composition and painting style of his works, Caillebotte may be considered part of the first movement after Impressionism: Neo-Impressionism. The second period of Pointillism, whose main representative was Georges Seurat, announced its influence in the late works that Caillebotte painted at his country house in Petit Gennevilliers. 

Caillebotte's style belongs to the School of Realism but was strongly influenced by his Impressionist associates. In common with his precursors Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet, as well his contemporary Degas, Caillebotte aimed to paint reality as it existed and as he saw it, hoping to reduce the inherent theatricality of painting. Perhaps because of his close relationship with so many of his peers, his style and technique vary considerably among his works, as if "borrowing" and experimenting, but not really sticking to any one style. At times, he seems very much in the Edgar Degas camp of rich-colored realism (especially his interior scenes); at other times, he shares the Impressionist commitment to "optical truth" and employs an impressionistic pastel-softness and loose brush strokes most similar to Renoir and Pissarro, although with a less vibrant palette.
The tilted ground common to these paintings is very characteristic of Caillebotte's work, which may have been strongly influenced by Japanese prints and the new technology of photography, although evidence of his use of photography is lacking. Cropping and "zooming-in", techniques that commonly are found in Caillebotte's oeuvre, may also be the result of his interest in photography, but may just as likely be derived from his intense interest in perspective effects. A large number of Caillebotte's works also employ a very high vantage point, including View of Rooftops - Snow (Vue de toits (Effet de neige) 1878, Boulevard Seen from Above (Boulevard vu d'en haut) 1880, and A Traffic Island (Un refuge, boulevard Haussmann), 1880.
Caillebotte is best known for his paintings of  still life , water sports and urban Paris, The latter is almost unique among his works for its particularly flat colors and photo-realistic effect, which give the painting its distinctive and modern look, almost akin to American Realists such as Edward Hopper.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

CERVIN / MATTERHORN BY FELIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON (1865-1925) 

Cervin / Matterhorn  (4,478m -14,691ft)
Switzerland - Italy border

About the work

Those very famous woodcuts and  illustrations in black and white brings to the young Swiss painter Felix Valotton an international fame. In 1891, he literally renewed the art of xylography following the publication of an article by Albert Aurier, "Le Symbolisme en peinture", calling for an "idealistic" and decorative art, from which would be banished "Concrete truth, illusionism, trompe-l'oeil". The engravings that Valotton show in 1892 made such a sensation that he was invited to take part in various shows (Salon des artistes français, Salon des indépendants, Salon d'automne).

In the begining of 1892 Valotton engraved on wood a series of mountains from the French and Swiss Alps, which he exhibited at the first Salon de la Rose-Croix in 1892. They were immediately noticed by the Nabis, a group he rallied from 1893 to 1903 before making a long friendship with Édouard Vuillard.

The mountain 

The  Mont Cervin (4,478m -14,691ft) also known as the Matterhorn is an alpine summit located on the Swiss-Italian border between the canton of Valais and the Aosta Valley in Switzerland. It has several other names: Cervino in Italian, Grand'Bèca in Arpitan, Matterhorn in German. The Cervin / Matterhorn is the most famous mountain in Switzerland, including the pyramidal shape that it offers from the village of Zermatt, in the German-speaking part of the canton of Valais.

Its four sides are joined about 400 meters below the summit in a summit pyramid, called "roof." Its summit is a broad ridge about two meters, on which stand actually two summits: one called "Swiss summit," the farther east, and the "Italian summit" slightly lower (4,476 meters), on the west side of the ridge. The two are separated by a notch in the hollow of which a cross was laid in September 1901.

The painter 

Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."

In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

L 'ESTEREL BY FELIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON (1865-1925) 

Mont Vinaigre (618m - 2,027ft) 

France (Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur) 

1. In L’Estérel et la baie de Cannes, 1925, oil on canvas

2.  In L’Estérel et la baie de Cannes, 1925, oil on canvas (détail) 

The mountain 

This view of L'Esterel and the Baie de Cannes by  FELIX Valloton  allows to see a large part of the Massif of the Esterel and its seven summits :  Mont Vinaigre (618 m - 2,027 ft), Mont Suvières (558m - 1831ft), Sommet du Marsaou (548m -1,798ft), Pic de l'Ours (492m -1,614ft), Pic du Cap-Roux  (453m -1,486ft), the Saint-Pilon (442 m -1,450ft) and the Sommet Pelet (439m -1,440ft).
The Esterel Massif is a low altitude volcanic mountain range of 32,000 hectares located on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It covers the south-east of the Var, a small part located in the Alpes-Maritimes, France. Separated from the Moors by the valley of the Argens, the relief of the Esterel is shredded and deeply ravined. The massif extends over 320 km2 of which 130 km2 classified and protected. 60 km2 of state forest are maintained by the National Forestry Office.

The heart of the massif is protected by a decree of 1996. In the part of Alpes-Maritimes, a departmental park of 772 ha was created in 1997. It shelters a population of red deer, introduced in 1961. In the Var, a Biological reserve protects nearly 800 hectares. The massif is a site of the Natura 2000 network responsible for the preservation of nature in Europe.

Mount Vinaigre (Mount Vinagar) located in Frejus is the highest peak in the Massif de l' Esterel and was the hideout of robbers. Gaspard de Besse (1757-1781), which robbed travelers and tax agents in the 18th century, sheltered there. Mont Vinaigre was also the refuge of the convicts escaped from the jail in Toulon.Today, Mount Vinaigre is not completely accessible to the public It can be approached by taking  the road DN7 between Fréjus and Mandelieu-la-Napoule, 3 km before the crossing with the road D237. There, a paved DFCI trail could allow access to its summit but it ends 1 kilometer after the forest house of Malpey.  Only vehicles belonging to the French National Forestry Office or rescue vehicles are allowed to pass this point.

The painter 
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
In 1899 Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a wealthy young widow with three children, and in 1900 he attained French citizenship. Around 1899, his printmaking activity diminished as he concentrated on painting, developing a sober, often bitter realism independently of the artistic mainstream. His Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1907) was painted as an apparent response to Picasso's portrait of the previous year, and in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Stein described the very methodical way in which Vallotton painted it, working from top to bottom as if lowering a curtain across the canvas.
Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."
In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.
Vallotton responded in 1914 to the coming of the First World War by volunteering for the French army, but he was rejected because of his age.  In 1915–16 he returned to the medium of woodcut for the first time since 1901 to express his feelings for his adopted country in the series, This is War, his last prints. He subsequently spent three weeks on a tour of the Champagne front in 1917, on a commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts. The sketches he produced became the basis for a group of paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette among them, in which he recorded with cool detachment the ruined landscape.  In his last years Félix Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on "composite landscapes", landscapes composed in the studio from memory and imagination. Always a prolific artist, by the end of his life he had completed over 1700 paintings and about 200 prints, in addition to hundreds of drawings and several sculptures.  He died on the day after his 60th birthday, following cancer surgery in Paris in 1925.

_______________________________

2017 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE MONT BLANC BY FELIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON  (1865-1925)

The Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)

  France - Italy  border

1. In Mont Blanc, 1892, woodcut print,   

2. In  Le Mont Blanc, 1892, woodcut print,  Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

About the works

Those very famous woodcuts and  illustrations in black and white brings to the young Swiss painter Felix Valotton an international fame. In 1891, he literally renewed the art of xylography following the publication of an article by Albert Aurier, "Le Symbolisme en peinture", calling for an "idealistic" and decorative art, from which would be banished "Concrete truth, illusionism, trompe-l'oeil". The engravings that Valotton show in 1892 made such a sensation that he was invited to take part in various shows (Salon des artistes français, Salon des indépendants, Salon d'automne).

In the begining of 1892 Valotton engraved on wood a series of mountains from the French and Swiss Alps, which he exhibited at the first Salon de la Rose-Croix in 1892. They were immediately noticed by the Nabis, a group he rallied from 1893 to 1903 before making a long friendship with Édouard Vuillard.

The mountain 

Mont Blanc (in French) or Monte Bianco (in Italian), both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It rises 4,808.73 m (15,777 ft) above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence.  The Mont Blanc 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 7 highest summit, (which are obviously 8 with 2 in Europe !) are :  

Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Mount Vinson (4,892m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.

The mountain lies in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The location of the summit is on the watershed line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the valleys of Montjoie, and Arve in France. The Mont Blanc massif is popular for mountaineering, hiking, skiing, and snowboarding.

The three towns and their communes which surround Mont Blanc are Courmayeur in Aosta Valley, Italy, and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and Chamonix in Haute-Savoie, France.  A cable car ascends and crosses the mountain range from Courmayeur to Chamonix, through the Col du Géant. Constructed beginning in 1957 and completed in 1965, the 11.6 km (7¼ mi) Mont Blanc Tunnel runs beneath the mountain between these two countries and is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes.

Since the French Revolution, the issue of the ownership of the summit has been debated. 

From 1416 to 1792, the entire mountain was within the Duchy of Savoy. In 1723 the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, acquired the Kingdom of Sardinia. The resulting state of Sardinia was to become preeminent in the Italian unification.[ In September 1792, the French revolutionary Army of the Alps under Anne-Pierre de Montesquiou-Fézensac seized Savoy without much resistance and created a department of the Mont-Blanc. In a treaty of 15 May 1796, Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to cede Savoy and Nice to France. In article 4 of this treaty it says: "The border between the Sardinian kingdom and the departments of the French Republic will be established on a line determined by the most advanced points on the Piedmont side, of the summits, peaks of mountains and other locations subsequently mentioned, as well as the intermediary peaks, knowing: starting from the point where the borders of Faucigny, the Duchy of Aoust and the Valais, to the extremity of the glaciers or Monts-Maudits: first the peaks or plateaus of the Alps, to the rising edge of the Col-Mayor". This act further states that the border should be visible from the town of Chamonix and Courmayeur. However, neither the peak of the Mont Blanc is visible from Courmayeur nor the peak of the Mont Blanc de Courmayeur is visible from Chamonix because part of the mountains lower down obscure them. A Sardinian Atlas map of 1869 showing the summit lying two thirds in Italy and one third in France.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna restored the King of Sardinia in Savoy, Nice and Piedmont, his traditional territories, overruling the 1796 Treaty of Paris. Forty-five years later, after the Second Italian War of Independence, it was replaced by a new legal act. This act was signed in Turin on 24 March 1860 by Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, and deals with the annexation of Savoy (following the French neutrality for the plebiscites held in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna to join the Kingdom of Sardinia, against the Pope's will). A demarcation agreement, signed on 7 March 1861, defines the new border. With the formation of Italy, for the first time Mont Blanc is located on the border of France and Italy.

The 1860 act and attached maps are still legally valid for both the French and Italian governments. One of the prints from the 1823 Sarde Atlas  positions the border exactly on the summit edge of the mountain (and measures it to be 4,804 m (15,761 ft) high). The convention of 7 March 1861 recognises this through an attached map, taking into consideration the limits of the massif, and drawing the border on the icecap of Mont Blanc, making it both French and Italian.Watershed analysis of modern topographic mapping not only places the main summit on the border, but also suggests that the border should follow a line northwards from the main summit towards Mont Maudit, leaving the southeast ridge to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur wholly within Italy.

Although the Franco-Italian border was redefined in both 1947 and 1963, the commission made up of both Italians and French ignored the Mont Blanc issue. In the early 21st century, administration of the mountain is shared between the Italian town of Courmayeur and the French town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, although the larger part of the mountain lies within the commune of the latter.

The painter 
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
In 1899 Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a wealthy young widow with three children, and in 1900 he attained French citizenship. Around 1899, his printmaking activity diminished as he concentrated on painting, developing a sober, often bitter realism independently of the artistic mainstream. His Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1907) was painted as an apparent response to Picasso's portrait of the previous year, and in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Stein described the very methodical way in which Vallotton painted it, working from top to bottom as if lowering a curtain across the canvas.
Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."
In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.
Vallotton responded in 1914 to the coming of the First World War by volunteering for the French army, but he was rejected because of his age.  In 1915–16 he returned to the medium of woodcut for the first time since 1901 to express his feelings for his adopted country in the series, This is War, his last prints. He subsequently spent three weeks on a tour of the Champagne front in 1917, on a commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts. The sketches he produced became the basis for a group of paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette among them, in which he recorded with cool detachment the ruined landscape.  In his last years Félix Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on "composite landscapes", landscapes composed in the studio from memory and imagination. Always a prolific artist, by the end of his life he had completed over 1700 paintings and about 200 prints, in addition to hundreds of drawings and several sculptures.  He died on the day after his 60th birthday, following cancer surgery in Paris in 1925.

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2017 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

LES DENTS DU MIDI BY FELIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON  (1865-1925)  

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

Switzerland

 In Les Dents du Midi, 1919, Oil on canvas, Private collection 

The mountain 

The Dents du Midi (Teeth of the south) (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to10,685 ft) are a mountain range, 3 kilometers long, located in the Chablais Alps in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Overlooking the valley of Illiez and Rhône Valley on south, they face the lake Salanfe, an artificial reservoir, and are part of the geological whole massif Giffre.

The name "Dents du Midi" is recent. The people formerly called them "Dents Tsallen". It was only towards the end of the19e century that the name "Dents du Midi" came officially.

Each « tooth » had several names over the centuries and according to its geological evolution.

- The "Cime de l'Est" (3178 meters) called "Mont Novierre" before the mid-17th century, and "Mont Saint-Michel "after landslides in 1635 and 1636 and finally "Dent Noire" (until the 19th century).

- The "Dent Jaune" (3186 m) was called the "Dent Rouge" until 1879.

- The "Doigt de Champéry" (in 1882) and then the Doigt Salanfe (in 1886) turned just into "Les Doigts" (Fingers) (3205 m and 3210 m).

- The  "Haute Cime" (3257 m) also had many names : "Dent de l’Ouest" (until 1784)an then "Dent du Midi", "Dent de Tsallen" and "Dent de Challent."

- As for l’Eperon (3114 m) (The Spur), it is assumed that there were two peaks but a landslide in the Middle Ages significantly changed its crest.

- The Forteresse (3164 m) and the Cathedral (3160 m) have not changed names.

The evolution of this massif continues nowadays. So on the morning of 30 October 2006, a volume of 1 million m3 of rock broke away from the edge of the Haute Cime and slid down the slope to an altitude of about 3000 m. The event did not present danger to the nearby village of Val-d'Illiez but roads and trails were closed for security reasons. According to the cantonal geologist, the landslide was caused by the thawing of rocks, helped by warm summers of recent years.
- More about Les Dents du Midi 

The painter 
Félix Edouard Vallotton (December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
In 1899 Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a wealthy young widow with three children, and in 1900 he attained French citizenship. Around 1899, his printmaking activity diminished as he concentrated on painting, developing a sober, often bitter realism independently of the artistic mainstream. His Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1907) was painted as an apparent response to Picasso's portrait of the previous year, and in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Stein described the very methodical way in which Vallotton painted it, working from top to bottom as if lowering a curtain across the canvas.
Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."
In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.
Vallotton responded in 1914 to the coming of the First World War by volunteering for the French army, but he was rejected because of his age.  In 1915–16 he returned to the medium of woodcut for the first time since 1901 to express his feelings for his adopted country in the series, This is War, his last prints. He subsequently spent three weeks on a tour of the Champagne front in 1917, on a commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts. The sketches he produced became the basis for a group of paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette among them, in which he recorded with cool detachment the ruined landscape.  In his last years Félix Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on "composite landscapes", landscapes composed in the studio from memory and imagination. Always a prolific artist, by the end of his life he had completed over 1700 paintings and about 200 prints, in addition to hundreds of drawings and several sculptures.  He died on the day after his 60th birthday, following cancer surgery in Paris in 1925.

2017 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau