LES DENTS DU MIDI PEINTES PAR BLANCHE BERTHOUD

BLANCHE BERTHOUD (1864-1938)
Les Dents du Midi (3,114 m à 3,257 m)
Suisse

La peintre
Blanche Berthoud est une artiste peintre suisse de la région de Neufchâtel (Suisse) qui a été très active tout au long de la première moitié du XXe siècle. Elle fait partie de la Société romande des femmes peintres fondée par la peintre Jeanne Lombard (1865-1945) qui défend très farouchement les femmes peintres montagnardes, un monde souvent réservé aux hommes. Elle a réalisé plusieurs peintures et aquarelles du Breithorn, dont l'une a été acquise par le Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Neufchâtel.

La montagne
Les Dents du Midi (3 114 m à 3 257 m -10 216 pi à 10 685 pi) sont un massif montagneux de 3 kilomètres de long situé dans les Alpes du Chablais dans le canton du Valais en Suisse. Dominant au sud la vallée d'Illiez et la vallée du Rhône, elles font face au lac de Salanfe, retenue artificielle, et font partie de l'ensemble géologique du massif du Giffre.
L'appellation « Dents du Midi » est récente. Autrefois appelée "Dents Tsallen". ce n'est que vers la fin du 19e siècle que l'appellation « Dents du Midi » a été officiellement a utilisée. Chaque « dent » a eu plusieurs noms au fil des siècles, selon son évolution géologique.
- La "Cime de l'Est" (3178 mètres) appelée "Mont Novierre" avant le milieu du 17ème siècle, et "Mont Saint-Michel" après des éboulements en 1635 et 1636 et enfin "Dent Noire" (jusqu'au 19ème siècle) .
- La "Dent Jaune" (3186 m) s'appelait la "Dent Rouge" jusqu'en 1879.
- Le "Doigt de Champéry" (en 1882) puis le Doigt Salanfe (en 1886) se transforme juste en "Les Doigts" (Doigts) (3205 m et 3210 m).
- La "Haute Cime" (3257 m) eut aussi plusieurs noms : "Dent de l'Ouest" (jusqu'en 1784) puis "Dent du Midi", "Dent de Tsallen" et "Dent de Challent".
- Quant à l'Eperon (3114 m) (L'Eperon), on suppose qu'il y avait deux sommets mais un éboulement au Moyen Age a considérablement modifié sa crête.
- La Forteresse (3164 m) et la Cathédrale (3160 m) n'ont pas changé de nom.
L'évolution de ce massif se poursuit de nos jours. Ainsi le matin du 30 octobre 2006, un volume de 1 million de m3 de roche se détachait du bord de la Haute Cime et dévalait la pente jusqu'à environ 3000 m d'altitude. L'événement n'a pas présenté de danger pour le village voisin de Val-d'Illiez mais les routes et les sentiers ont été fermés pour des raisons de sécurité. Selon le géologue cantonal, le glissement de terrain a été causé par le dégel des roches, aidé par les étés chauds de ces dernières années.

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2023 - Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

 

LES DENTS DU MIDI PEINTES PAR FELIX VALOTTON

 

FELIX VALOTTON (1865-1925)
Les Dents du Midi (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to10,685 ft)
Suisse

In "Lac Léman et Les Dents-du-Midi", 1919, Huile sur toile, 38 x 54 cm, Collection privée 

La montagne
Les Dents du Midi (3 114 m à 3 257 m -10 216 pi à 10 685 pi) sont un massif montagneux de 3 kilomètres de long situé dans les Alpes du Chablais dans le canton du Valais en Suisse. Dominant au sud la vallée d'Illiez et la vallée du Rhône, elles font face au lac de Salanfe, retenue artificielle, et font partie de l'ensemble géologique du massif du Giffre.
L'appellation « Dents du Midi » est récente. Autrefois appelée "Dents Tsallen". ce n'est que vers la fin du 19e siècle que l'appellation « Dents du Midi » a été officiellement a utilisée. Chaque « dent » a eu plusieurs noms au fil des siècles, selon son évolution géologique.
- La "Cime de l'Est" (3178 mètres) appelée "Mont Novierre" avant le milieu du 17ème siècle, et "Mont Saint-Michel" après des éboulements en 1635 et 1636 et enfin "Dent Noire" (jusqu'au 19ème siècle) .
- La "Dent Jaune" (3186 m) s'appelait la "Dent Rouge" jusqu'en 1879.
- Le "Doigt de Champéry" (en 1882) puis le Doigt Salanfe (en 1886) se transforme juste en "Les Doigts" (Doigts) (3205 m et 3210 m).
- La "Haute Cime" (3257 m) eut aussi plusieurs noms : "Dent de l'Ouest" (jusqu'en 1784) puis "Dent du Midi", "Dent de Tsallen" et "Dent de Challent".
- Quant à l'Eperon (3114 m) (L'Eperon), on suppose qu'il y avait deux sommets mais un éboulement au Moyen Age a considérablement modifié sa crête.
- La Forteresse (3164 m) et la Cathédrale (3160 m) n'ont pas changé de nom.
L'évolution de ce massif se poursuit de nos jours. Ainsi le matin du 30 octobre 2006, un volume de 1 million de m3 de roche se détachait du bord de la Haute Cime et dévalait la pente jusqu'à environ 3000 m d'altitude. L'événement n'a pas présenté de danger pour le village voisin de Val-d'Illiez mais les routes et les sentiers ont été fermés pour des raisons de sécurité. Selon le géologue cantonal, le glissement de terrain a été causé par le dégel des roches, aidé par les étés chauds de ces dernières années.

Le peintre
Félix Vallotton, peintre d'origine suisse naturalisé français en 1900, est un artiste à cheval sur deux siècles, deux pays et plusieurs tendances esthétiques, des Nabis à la Neue Sachlichkeit (Nouvelle Objectivité). S'il est aujourd'hui moins connu en France qu'en Suisse, c'est pourtant à Paris, dans les années 1890, que ses gravures sur bois novatrices lui ont valu une renommée qui s'est rapidement étendue à l'Europe entière. Tout au long de sa vie le " Nabi étranger ", comme il était surnommé, s'est intéressé à une gamme étendue de sujets récurrents - intérieurs, toilettes, nus féminins, paysages, natures morte, rendus étranges par son style lisse et froid, aux couleurs raffinées, aux découpages et aux cadrages audacieux. Et bien qu'il ne fût pas toujours compris par la critique de son temps, Vallotton a su s'imposer comme une figure en vue de la scène artistique parisienne et trouver sa place dans le courant moderne, notamment en participant à de nombreuses manifestations internationales d'avant-garde devenues mythiques.
  

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

DENTS DU MIDI PAINTED BY FREDERIC ROUGE

FREDERIC ROUGE (1867-1950)

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

Switzerland

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

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

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

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE DENTS DU MIDI PAINTED BY JEAN-ANTOINE LINCK

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

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

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


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

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LES DENTS BLANCHES PAINTED BY FERDINAND HODLER

FERDINAND HODLER (1853-1918)
Les Dents Blanches /  La Dent du Barme (2,759m - 9,051ft)
France - Switzerland border

In Les Dents Blanches in Champery, oil on canvas, 1916, Private collection

The mountain
Les Dents Blanches  (The White Teeth) is a mountain range made up of 9 peaks between Champery in Switzerland and  Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval  (France), in the Giffre massif and overlooking the Illiez valley. The highest peak,  Dent de Barme, rises to 2,759m.
Like its neighbor the Tour des Dents du Midi, the Tour des Dents Blanches takes place in stages and over several days. The complete loop covers 44.4 km and has a cumulative elevation of 8,400 meters. This tour exists since 1983 thanks to a collective work of different regions and huts. Together they carried out the tracing of the route, its markup and the securing of certain passages.
With its 4 mountain lakes, the Dents Blanches are the delight of nature lovers. The ibex have made Pas de l'Ours their privileged habitat and marmots are not lacking in appeal. Other treasures of fauna such as ptarmigan and bearded vulture can also be obs

The painter
Ferdinand Hodler is one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century. His early works were portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings in a realistic style. Later, he adopted a personal form of symbolism he called Parallelism.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century his work evolved to combine influences from several genres including Symbolism and Art Nouveau. In 1890 he completed Night, a work that marked Hodler's turn toward symbolist imagery. It depicts several recumbent figures, all of them relaxed in sleep except for an agitated man who is menaced by a figure shrouded in black, which Hodler intended as a symbol of death. Hodler developed a style he called "Parallelism" that emphasized the symmetry and rhythm he believed formed the basis of human society. In paintings such as The Chosen One, groupings of figures are symmetrically arranged in poses suggestive of ritual or dance.
Hodler painted number of large-scale historical paintings, often with patriotic themes. In 1897 he accepted a commission to paint a series of large frescoes for the Weapons Room of the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum in Zurich. The compositions he proposed, including The Battle of Marignan which depicted a battle that the Swiss lost, were controversial for their imagery and style, and Hodler was not permitted to execute the frescoes until 1900.
Hodler's work in his final phase took on an expressionist aspect with strongly coloured and geometrical figures. Landscapes were pared down to essentials, sometimes consisting of a jagged wedge of land between water and sky

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

LES PLEÏADES BY JONH RUSKIN

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

 Les Pleïades (1,306 m - 4,285 ft) 

 Switzerland 

 In Morning in Spring, with North-East Wind, at Vevey,  

watercolour and bodycolour over graphite, c. 1849-1869, Ashmolean Museum Oxford

The mountain 
Les Pleïades (1,306 m - 4,285 ft)  is the name of a Swiss mountain and a tourist resort in the canton of Vaud, located near Lake Geneva and Vevey. Its former name is the Pleiaux, probably referring to either the word Pleyau (gift in kind to the local lord) or to a deformation of the term Laplayau, which indicated the place where horses are spliced ​​after the wood felled.
The current name was given by Philippe Bridel in reference to the Pleïade of Greek mythology.
The Pleïades are the beginning of the chain of pre-Alps from the west. From the summit (where there is a relay for radioamateur transmissions), one can see Lake Geneva, the rocks of Naye, the plain of the Rhone and the Dents du Midi.
Access by car to the top of the Pleiades is not possible. The narrow road from Blonay stops at the hamlet of Lally, about 20 minutes walk from the resort. The Vevey-Blonay-Les Pléiades cogwheel train, belonging to the MOB group, joins the summit directly from the Vevey station.
The Pleiades are home to a nearby ski area, whose lifts belong to the towns of Blonay and Saint-Légier-La Chiésaz.

The painter
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin also penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
About mountains he painted quite a lot of times, Ruskin wrote: "They are the great cathedrals of the earth, with their portals of rock, the mosaics of clouds, the choirs of torrents, and the altars of snow, sometimes with purple sparkling stars." and "Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery."

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE DENTS DU MIDI BY GUSTAVE COURBET

GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877)

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

Switzerland 

1. In Le Château de Chillon signed (lower left) oil on canvas (54 x 64.8 cm.)
Painted circa 1874-1875. Private collection (sold by Christie's)
2.  In Le Château de Chillon signed (lower left) oil on canvas
Painted circa 1874-1875. Private collection.

About  the paintings 

Gustave Courbet painted many times the Castle of Chillon by which he was fascinated. He has painted it from different angles which, as in these two examples, show the Dents du Midi in the distance ... or not. In all these representations, a common element: a sailboat on the lake passing near the castle. During his exile in Switzerland, Courbet repeated the variations on the same themes, panicked by the threat of having to pay the exorbitant costs of rebuilding the Column Vendôme in PAris. This bulimia of production prompted many counterfeiters to take advantage of the situation and, already during the artist's lifetime, the art market was invaded by works attributed to Courbet, whose originality is difficult to appreciate.

In this unfavorable context, Courbet nevertheless has the strength to produce landscapes largely painted  like Le Leman au coucher de soleil (Jenisch Museum in Vevey and the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Gallen), a good dozen of Château de  Chillon (including  the two above and the one in the Gustave-Courbet Museum in Ornans). His health deteriorated at the end of 1876.
 In 1877, he sat down in anticipation of the World Expo the following year, to a Grand Panorama of the Alps (The Cleveland Museum of Art) remained partially incomplete.
Courbet still refused to return to France. His will was respected, and his body was buried in La Tour-de-Peilz in Switzerland on January 3, 1878, after his death on December 31, 1877, during New Year's Eve, his heart having let go.

The painter 

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.

Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.

Courbet  painted a few mountains in his life : the Juras mountains around Ornans ( France) and a few  mountains in Switzerland during his exil. Like many painters of the 19th Century, Courbet didn't name the mountain he painted; he liked to give a description of the general atmosphere rather than  a precise geographical location.  

 "I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty."

The mountain 

See  The Dents du midi already posted in this blog...

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

LES DENTS DU MIDI PAINTED BY ALEXANDRE CALAME

ALEXANDRE CALAME (1810-1864) 

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

Switzerland

In La Dent du Midi, oil on canvas  (100 x 140 cm), 1849.  Musées d'art et d'histoire, Ville de Genève

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

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

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LES DENTS DU MIDI BY FERDINAND HODLER

FERDINAND HODLER (1853-1916) 

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

Switzerland

Painted in 1912, 1916 and 1917 

1.  In The Dents du Midi from Chesieres, 1912, oil on canvas,

2. The Dents du midi, 1916, oil on canvas  

3. Dents du Midi in clouds, 1917, Oil on canvas 

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.

The painter 
Ferdinand Hodler was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century. His early works were portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings in a realistic style. Later, he adopted a personal form of symbolism he called Parallelism.

In the last decade of the nineteenth century his work evolved to combine influences from several genres including Symbolism and Art Nouveau. In 1890 he completed Night, a work that marked Hodler's turn toward symbolist imagery. It depicts several recumbent figures, all of them relaxed in sleep except for an agitated man who is menaced by a figure shrouded in black, which Hodler intended as a symbol of death. Hodler developed a style he called "Parallelism" that emphasized the symmetry and rhythm he believed formed the basis of human society. In paintings such as The Chosen One, groupings of figures are symmetrically arranged in poses suggestive of ritual or dance.

Hodler painted number of large-scale historical paintings, often with patriotic themes. In 1897 he accepted a commission to paint a series of large frescoes for the Weapons Room of the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum in Zurich. The compositions he proposed, including The Battle of Marignan which depicted a battle that the Swiss lost, were controversial for their imagery and style, and Hodler was not permitted to execute the frescoes until 1900.

Hodler's work in his final phase took on an expressionist aspect with strongly coloured and geometrical figures. Landscapes were pared down to essentials, sometimes consisting of a jagged wedge of land between water and sky.

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 

LES DENTS DU MIDI PAINTED BY BLANCHE BERTHOUD

 BLANCHE BERTHOUD  (1864 -1938)  

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

Switzerland 

In Les dents du Midi, 1909, oil on wooden panel

2 others paintings of Les Dents du Midi in this blog: 

- one by Gustave Courbet

- one by  Frédéric Rouge 

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.

The painter 
Blanche Berthoud was a Swiss painter from the region Neufchatel (Switzerland) who was very active throughout the first half of the 20th century. She was part of the  Société romande des femmes peintres  (Romande Society of Women Painter) founded  by the painter Jeanne Lombard (1865-1945) who defended very fiercely mountain women painters, a world often reserved for men. She made several paintings and watercolors of the Breithorn, one of which was acquired by the Museum of Art and History of Neufchatel.

2016 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THE '"DENTS DU MIDI" PAINTED BY GUSTAVE COURBET

GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877)

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

Switzerland 

1. Grand panorama des Alpes, 1877, The Cleveland Museum of Art 

2. Panorama des Alpes, 1876, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

The painter 

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.

Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.

Courbet  painted a few mountains in his life : the Juras mountains around Ornans ( France) and a few  mountains in Switzerland during his exil; Like many painters of the 19th Century, Courbet didn't name the mountain he painted; he liked to give a description of the general atmosphere rather than  a precise geographical location.  The painting "Grand panorama des Alpes"  which includes the Dents du Midi mountain, is among the latest paintings he did, during the year he died. An other one shown here is  anterior one year and is is kept in, Geneva in the  MAH (Museum of Art and History).  

 "I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty."

The mountain 

See  The Dents du midi already posted in this blog

THE "DENTS DU MIDI" PAINTED BY FREDERIC ROUGE

FREDERIC ROUGE (1867-1950)

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

Switzerland

In At sunset, 1922 and 1943, oil on canvas, Private collection

The mountains

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

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

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

- The "Cime de l'Est" (3,178 meters) called "Mont Novierre" before the mid-17th century, and "Mont Saint-Michel "after landslides in 1635 and 1636 and finally "Dent Noire" (until the 19th century).

- The "Dent Jaune" (3,186 m) was called the "Dent Rouge" until 1879.

- The "Doigt de Champéry" (in 1882) and then the Doigt Salanfe (in 1886) turned just into "Les Doigts" (Fingers) (3,205 m and 3210 m).

- The  "Haute Cime" (3,257 m) also had many names : "Dent de L’ouest" (until 1784)an then "Dent du Midi", "Dent de Tsallen" and "Dent  de Challent."

- As for l’Eperon (3,114 m) (The Spur), it is assumed that there were two peaks but a landslide in the Middle Ages significantly changed its crest.

- The  Forteresse (3,164 m) and the Cathedral (3,160 m) have not changed names.

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

The painter 

Frederic Rouge was born in Aigle (Switzerland), on 27 April 1867. His parents owned a small shoe factory. After school, he attended the Fine Arts College in Basel for a year, coming first of his class at the end of the course. Then, after a while studying with  the history painter Vigier, he came back home to live with his parents. To perfect his technique, the artist spent three consecutive winters at the Julian Academy in Paris "where Professor Boulanger, exacting and irascible, was hard to please".  In 1903, Frederic Rouge settled in Ollon, not far from Aigle, in a pleasant house called "The Cedars". Today Ollon is still a large village surrounded by orchards and vineyards bathed in sunshine, its dense forests teeming with wildlife, and where the Alpine scenery reigns supreme. 

He wholeheartedly loved this region which provided him with so many subjects of inspiration, and whose every season, scene and mood he rendered so faithfully.

Frederic Rouge was suffering from paralysis when he died on 13 February 1950. All his life he had remained unassuming, an honest man and a great artist, true to his ideals, a citizen devoted to the cause of liberty - perhaps not the best way to make one's fortune, even for a painter of talent ! 

Sources:

Frederic Rouge biography