THE MONT BLANC PAINTED BY CESARE MAGGI

CESARE MAGGI (1881-1962)
The Mont Blanc (4,808.73 m -15,777 ft)
France - Italy 

in "The Mont Blanc seen from italy", oil on canvas, 100 x 140 cm

 
The painter
The italian painter Cesare Maggi was born into a family of actors, Maggi embarked on classical studies at his father’s wish but also took up painting at a very early age His debut in Florence at the Esposizione Annuale della Società di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1898 was followed by a short trip to Paris to catch up with the latest developments.
The crucial turning point in Maggi’s art came in 1889 with the posthumous show of work by Giovanni Segantini held by the Milanese Society of Fine Arts, which prompted a definitive shift to landscape painting of a Divisionist character. After a short stay in the Engadin, he returned to Milan before finally settling in Turin. Commercial collaboration with Alberto Grubicy until 1913 enabled Maggi to establish himself quickly as one of the leading representatives of the second generation of Divisionist painters in Italy. He painted a repertoire of readily comprehensible mountain landscapes focusing primarily on aspects of the visual perception of the reflection of light and colour but lacking the deep spirituality of Segantini’s work. He took part in the major Italian and European exhibitions and the Venice Biennale devoted an entire room to his work at the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte of Venice in 1912. After an interlude devoted to portrait painting in the same decade, the artist’s mature work focused on greater simplification of subject matter, mostly in landscapes.
Maggi obtained the chair in painting at the Albertina Academy, Turin, in 1936.


The mountain
The Mont-Blanc (in French) (4 ,808.73 m -15,777 ft) 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 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 overcrowding threshold of Mont Blanc is reached, with 300 to 400 departures per day in summer.
At the summit of the National Mountain Council held in Sallanches at the end of August 2006, it was estimated that between 25,000 and 30,000 people set out in 2005 to conquer Mont Blanc. With the opening of new markets (Russia, China, India), 50,000 to 100,000 people could tomorrow try the adventure, the figure of 200,000 has even been advanced.
These prospects are nightmarish for the defenders of the site and for some political leaders of the valley, such as the mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, common on which Mont Blanc is located.

 - More about the Mont-Blanc

___________________________________________
2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

CERRO ACONCAGUA PAINTED BY RHOD WULFARS

 

RHOD WULFARS (bn. 1979)
Aconcagua (6,961 m -22,838 ft)
Argentina

In "Aconcagua," Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24cm

The artist
Rhod Wulfars is a contemporary mountain painter using mainly acrylic technique for his paintings.
He was born in 1979 in Mendoza (Argentina). In his website he wrote: "I have spent my whole life by the mountains. On day I started to paint them". Using, in the manner of Nicolas de Staël, a style always beetween abstract and figurative, his very strong and very moving paintings described perfectly the majesty and the spectacular contents of the peaks he paints. Rhod Wulfars makes a surprising use of acrylic medium, in thick paste as one could do with oil paint. He used to named his works only bu numbers, and series letters, but sometime he writes the name of the peaks ans makes it more easy to identify.
Other works by this artist on his website : rhodwulfars.wixsite.com/rhodwulfars/
Contact : @rhodwulfars

The mountain
Cerro Aconcagua (6,961 meters -22,838 ft) or simplynThe Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside of Asia and by extension the highest point in both the Western Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
Aconcagua is not a volcano.  he origin of the name is contested; it is either from the Mapuche "Aconca-Hue", which refers to the Aconcagua River, the Quechua "Ackon Cahuak", meaning "Sentinel of Stone", or Quechua "Anco Cahuac", meaning "White Sentinel" or the Aymara "Janq'u Q'awa" meaning "White Ravine", "White Brook".
Aconcagua is located in the Andes mountain range, in the Mendoza Province, Argentina, and lies 112 kilometers (70 mi) northwest of its capital, the city of Mendoza and 108 km (67 mi) from Santiago de Chile (the capital of Chile). The summit is in fact located about 5 kilometers from San Juan Province and 15 kilometers from the international border with Chile; its nearest higher neighbor is Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush, 16,520 kilometers (10,270 mi) away.
Aconcagua is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. The 7 summits (which are obviously 8 !)... are : Mt Everest (8,848m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m), Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Vinson Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m). Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass.
The mountain and its surroundings are part of the Aconcagua Provincial Park. The mountain has a number of glaciers. The largest glacier is the Ventisquero Horcones Inferior at about 10 km long, which descends from the south face to about 3600 m altitude near the Confluencia camp. Two other large glacier systems are the Ventisquero de las Vacas Sur and Glaciar Este/Ventisquero Relinchos system at about 5 km. 

___________________________

2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
 

THE MONT BLANC PAINTED BY CESARE MAGGI

 

CESARE MAGGI (1881-1962),
The Mont Blanc (4,808.73 m -15,777 ft)
France - Italy

In " Alla montagne, il Monte Biancho", oil on canvas 

The painter
The italian painter Cesare Maggi was born into a family of actors, Maggi embarked on classical studies at his father’s wish but also took up painting at a very early age His debut in Florence at the Esposizione Annuale della Società di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1898 was followed by a short trip to Paris to catch up with the latest developments.
The crucial turning point in Maggi’s art came in 1889 with the posthumous show of work by Giovanni Segantini held by the Milanese Society of Fine Arts, which prompted a definitive shift to landscape painting of a Divisionist character. After a short stay in the Engadin, he returned to Milan before finally settling in Turin. Commercial collaboration with Alberto Grubicy until 1913 enabled Maggi to establish himself quickly as one of the leading representatives of the second generation of Divisionist painters in Italy. He painted a repertoire of readily comprehensible mountain landscapes focusing primarily on aspects of the visual perception of the reflection of light and colour but lacking the deep spirituality of Segantini’s work. He took part in the major Italian and European exhibitions and the Venice Biennale devoted an entire room to his work at the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte of Venice in 1912. After an interlude devoted to portrait painting in the same decade, the artist’s mature work focused on greater simplification of subject matter, mostly in landscapes.
Maggi obtained the chair in painting at the Albertina Academy, Turin, in 1936.

The mountain
The Mont-Blanc (in French) (4 ,808.73 m -15,777 ft) 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 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.

___________________________________________
2022- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MER DE GLACE AND GRAND CHARMOZ PAINTED BY GABRIEL LOPPÉ

 

GABRIEL LOPPÉ (1825-1913),
Les Aiguilles du Grand Charmoz (3,445m -11,302ft)
France

In La Mer de Glace et les Grands Charmoz, Chamonix, Huile sur toile, 

Courtesy John Mitchell Fine Arts, London, and Artcurial Paris,

 
The painter
Toussaint Gabriel Loppé was a French painter, photographer and mountaineer. He became the first foreigner to be made a member of the Alpine Club in London. His father was a captain in the French Engineers and Loppé's childhood was spent in many different towns in south-eastern France. Aged twenty-one Loppé climbed a small mountain in the Languedoc and found a group of painters sketching on the summit. He had found his calling and subsequently went off to Geneva where he met the reputed leading Swiss landscapist, Alexandre Calame (1810 -1864). Loppé took up mountaineering in Grindelwald in the 1850s and made friends easily with the many English climbers in France and Switzerland. Although he was frequently labelled as a pupil of Calame and his rival François Diday, Loppé was almost an entirely self-taught artist. He became the first painter to work at higher altitudes during climbing expeditions earning the right to be considered the founder of the peintres-alpinistes school, which became established in the Savoie at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Notable followers of Loppé include, Charles Henri Contencin (1875-1955) and Jacques Fourcy (1906-1990). Together with the first ascent of Mt Mallet in Chamonix’s Grandes Jorasses range, Loppé made over 40 ascents of Mont Blanc during his climbing career, which lasted until the late 1890s. He frequently made oil sketches from alpine summits, including a panorama of the view from the summit of Mont Blanc.
His paintings became celebrated for their atmosphere and spontaneity and he soon found himself taking part in many exhibitions in London and in Paris.
By 1896 Loppé had spent over fifty seasons climbing and painting in Chamonix. As the valley’s unrivalled ‘Court painter’ his work was in constant demand with the majority of his pictures going to English climbers and summer tourists.
In his later years, Loppé became fascinated with photography and was quite an innovator in this field too. His long exposure photograph of the Eiffel Tower struck by lightning, now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris remains one of his iconic images. 

 
The mountain
The Aiguille des Grands Charmoz (3,445 m), is one of the Chamonix needles in the Mont Blanc massif. It is made up of a ridge bristling with " gendarmes", including La Carrée, and Bâton Wicks. The first ascent was done on August 9, 1885 by H. Dunod and P. Vignon with the guides J. Desailloux, F. Folliguet, F. and G. Simond, by the corridor Charmoz-Grépon. It is today the normal way of descent, the climb generally being made by the south-west slope and the northwestern edge (AD +), climbed 15 July 1880 by Albert F. Mummery with Alexandre Burgener and Benedikt Venetz, which stopped before the summit at point 3 435 m. The Aiguille des Grands Charmoz is linked with the Aiguille du Grépon for the crossing of Charmoz-Grépon (D), one of the great rocky classics of the Mont Blanc massif. The first crossing was done by Laurent Croux in 1904. The first ascent of the north face, via the needle of the Republic, and crossing the edges of the Charmoz was done by Raymond Leininger and G. Bicavelle in 1946. In 1974, Jean-Claude Droyer succeeded the solo climb of the western pillar of the Grand Charmoz (Cordier lane opened in 1970 by Patrick Cordier).
The Mt Blanc is one of the 7 highest summits in earth, (which are obviously 8 with 2 in Europe !):
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 Glacier
The Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) is an alpine valley glacier located on the northern slope of the Mont-Blanc massif. It is formed by the confluence of the Tacul glacier and the Leschaux glacier and flows into the Arve valley, on the territory of the municipality of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, giving rise to the Arveyron. The glacier is seven kilometers long, its supply basin has a maximum length of twelve kilometers and an area of ​​40 km2, while its thickness reaches 300 meters. In the middle of the 20th century, an ice cave was pierced for the first time in the Mer de Glace. Due to the attraction's success, a cable car was put into service in 1961 to access it, then replaced by a cable car in 1988. Since 1973, an underground hydroelectric power station has been using the meltwater from the glacier.
Almost a million visitors go to Montenvers every year to contemplate the Mer de Glace. During peak periods, half of them visit the ice cave. Three museums are also located on the site. Skiing is possible from the Aiguille du Midi in winter. However, the retreat of the glacier, measured since 1860-1870, causes a loss of thickness of 120 meters in a century in its terminal part. It causes difficulties at the level of the ice cave, where more and more steps are necessary to reach the gondola, and requires considering its upstream movement, like the catchment of the hydroelectric power station in 2011.
_______________________________
2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC & THE MER DE GLACE BY JOHN RUSKIN

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900),
The Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)
France - Italy border

In Mer de Glace Chamonix, watercolor on paper, 1849, Ruskin Foundation

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.

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 Glacier
The Mer de Glace  ( Sea of Ice) is an alpine valley glacier located on the northern slope of the Mont-Blanc massif, in the French department of Haute-Savoie. It is formed by the confluence of the Tacul glacier and the Leschaux glacier and flows into the Arve valley, on the territory of the municipality of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, giving rise to the Arveyron. The glacier is seven kilometers long, its supply basin has a maximum length of twelve kilometers and an area of ​​40 km2, while its thickness reaches 300 meters.
In the seventeenth century, the glacier, which descends into the valley and threatens homes, is feared by the population, so that only its terminal tongue is known, under the name of Glacier des Bois. Then finished by a natural cave, it is the subject of numerous paintings. Its current name was given to it in 1741 by William Windham during the exploration he carried out with his British compatriot Richard Pococke. Two decades later, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, the future instigator of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, made several observations of the glacier and asked Marc-Théodore Bourrit to promote it. It thus contributes to the development of alpine tourism and to the visit of numerous personalities of letters as well as of the aristocracy; scientists carried out experiments there in the 19th century. To shelter them, three increasingly large and comfortable shelters were successively built in Montenvers. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Montenvers railway, leaving from Chamonix, was created. In the middle of the century, an ice cave was pierced for the first time in the Mer de Glace. Due to the attraction's success, a cable car was put into service in 1961 to access it, then replaced by a cable car in 1988. Since 1973, an underground hydroelectric power station has been using the meltwater from the glacier.
Almost a million visitors go to Montenvers every year to contemplate the Mer de Glace. During peak periods, half of them visit the ice cave. Three museums are also located on the site. Skiing is possible from the Aiguille du Midi in winter. However, the retreat of the glacier, measured since 1860-1870, causes a loss of thickness of 120 meters in a century in its terminal part. It causes difficulties at the level of the ice cave, where more and more steps are necessary to reach the gondola, and requires considering its upstream movement, like the catchment of the hydroelectric power station in 2011.
_______________________________

2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC PAINTED BY JEAN-ANTOINE LINCK

 

 

 

JEAN-ANTOINE LINCK (1766-1843)
The Mont Blanc (4,808.73 m -15,777 ft)
France-Italy border

In Vue du Mont blanc à partir du Col de Balme, Estampe, 50 x50cm, 

Musée Alpin de Chamonix-Mont-Blanc

About this picture
This print represents the Chamonix valley seen from the Col de Balme. This point of view allows the spectator to embrace the major part of the Mont-Blanc massif and the valley bottom by following the course of the Arve. Jean-Antoine Linck offers a relatively realistic panorama, sometimes exaggerating the bristling of summits and seracs. In the foreground, the artist has placed a few figures who seem to be tourists in awe of the landscape accompanied by a guide leaning against the border post with his two mules. Linck was trained in Geneva in his father's workshop in the context of the "Fabrique" which brings together watchmakers, jewelers and painters on enamel. It was in this dynamic artistic environment of the second half of the 18th century that the first engravers appeared who made the Chamonix valley known through their watercolor prints. A real industry of landscape engraving is then set up. Linck is one of the greatest representatives of this artistic movement linked to the rise of alpine tourism and a new craze for the landscape. He creates high-quality etched works, very popular with travelers, which he sells in his Geneva boutique. In his "Manual of the traveler in Switzerland" of 1818, Ebel moreover advises the latter in order to find the best artists. He quotes Linck in particular and specifies that this print was worth 18 pounds, a fairly large sum for the time. Despite everything, the print is reproducible and cheaper than a painting. It therefore lends itself perfectly to the request of visitors to take with them views of the regions visited.

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

The mountain
The Mont Blanc (4,808.73 m -15,777 ft) or Monte Bianco, both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It 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 summits, (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. A Sardinian Atlas map of 1869 showing the summit lying two thirds in Italy and one third in France.
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.

_______________________________________


2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE BIANCO PAINTED BY CESARE MAGGI

 

 CESARE MAGGI (1881-1962)
The Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)
France - Italy border

In  A view of Monte Bianco from Entrèves, Oil on canvas, 70x100 cm,  Private collection 

 

The painter
The italian painter Cesare Maggi was born into a family of actors, Maggi embarked on classical studies at his father’s wish but also took up painting at a very early age His debut in Florence at the Esposizione Annuale della Società di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1898 was followed by a short trip to Paris to catch up with the latest developments.
The crucial turning point in Maggi’s art came in 1889 with the posthumous show of work by Giovanni Segantini held by the Milanese Society of Fine Arts, which prompted a definitive shift to landscape painting of a Divisionist character. After a short stay in the Engadin, he returned to Milan before finally settling in Turin. Commercial collaboration with Alberto Grubicy until 1913 enabled Maggi to establish himself quickly as one of the leading representatives of the second generation of Divisionist painters in Italy. He painted a repertoire of readily comprehensible mountain landscapes focusing primarily on aspects of the visual perception of the reflection of light and colour but lacking the deep spirituality of Segantini’s work. He took part in the major Italian and European exhibitions and the Venice Biennale devoted an entire room to his work at the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte of Venice in 1912. After an interlude devoted to portrait painting in the same decade, the artist’s mature work focused on greater simplification of subject matter, mostly in landscapes.
Maggi obtained the chair in painting at the Albertina Academy, Turin, in 1936.

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.

 
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2021- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT EREBUS BY EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON

EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON (1872-1912)
Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft)
Antarctica (Ross Island)

In Mount Erebus, 1906, watercolour, Royal Geographical Society Museum, London

The mountain
Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft), not to be confused with Mount Elbrus is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley) and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth highest ultra mountain on an island, located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes: Mount Terror, Mount Bird, and Mount Terra Nova.
The volcano has been active since c. 1.3 million years ago and is the site of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory run by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Mount Erebus was discovered on January 27, 1841 (and observed to be in eruption) by polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross who named it and its companion, Mount Terror, after his ships, Erebus and Terror (which were later used by Sir John Franklin on his disastrous Arctic expedition). Erebus is a dark region in Hades in Greek mythology. Present with Ross on the Erebus was the young Joseph Hooker, future president of the Royal Society and close friend of Charles Darwin. Erebus was an Ancient Greek primordial deity of darkness, the son of Chaos.
Mount Erebus is classified as a polygenetic stratovolcano. The bottom half of the volcano is a shield and the top half is a stratocone. The composition of the current eruptive products of Erebus is anorthoclase-porphyritic tephritic phonolite and phonolite, which are the bulk of exposed lava flow on the volcano. Erebus is the world's only presently erupting phonolite volcano.
Researchers spent more than three months during the 2007–08 field season installing an unusually dense array of seismometers around Mount Erebus to listen to waves of energy generated by small, controlled blasts from explosives they buried along its flanks and perimeter and to record scattered seismic signals generated by lava lake eruptions and local ice quakes. By studying the refracted and scattered seismic waves, the scientists produced an image of the uppermost (top few km) of the volcano to understand the geometry of its "plumbing" and how the magma rises to the lava lake. These results demonstrated a complex upper-volcano conduit system with appreciable upper-volcano magma storage to the northwest of the lava lake at depths hundreds of meters below the surface.


The artist
Edward Adrian Wilson, nicknamed "Uncle Bill" was an English physician, polar explorer, natural historian, painter and ornithologist. Wilson took part in two British expeditions to Antarctica, the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) and the tragic Terra Nova Expedition (1907-1912), both under the leadership of Scott.
Dr. Edward A. Wilson is widely regarded as one of the finest artists ever to have worked in the Antarctic. Sailing with Captain Scott aboard 'Discovery' (1901-1904), he became the last in a long tradition of 'exploration artists' from an age when pencil and water-colour were the main methods of producing accurate scientific records of new lands and animal species. He combined scientific, topographical and landscape techniques to produce accurate and beautiful images of the last unknown continent. Such was the strength of his work that it also helped to found the tradition of modern wildlife painting. In particular Wilson captured the essence of the flight and motion of Southern Ocean sea-birds on paper.
Returning with Captain Scott aboard 'Terra Nova' (1910-1913) as Chief of Scientific Staff, he continued to record the continent and its wildlife with extraordinary deftness. Chosen to accompany Captain Scott to the South Pole, his last drawings are from one of the most famous epic journeys in exploration history. Along with his scientific work, Wilson's pencil recorded the finding of Roald Amundsen's tent at the South Pole by Captain Scott. Wilson died, along with the other members of the British Pole Party, during the return journey, in March 1912. The drawings and paintings were created at considerable personal cost in the freezing conditions in which Wilson worked. He often suffered severely from the cold whilst sketching and also from snow-blindness, or sunburn of the eye. They provide a remarkable testament to one of the great figures of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. The book has been produced as a companion volume to 'Edward Wilson's Nature Notebooks' by two of Wilson's great nephews, to mark the centenary of his death.


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2021 - Wandering Vertexes..
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MOUNT ELBRUS/ EASTERN SUMMIT PAINTED BY ILYA NIKOLAEVICH ZANKOVSKY

ILYA NIKOLAEVICH ZANKOVSKY  (1832-1919)
Mount Elbrus / eastern summit (5,621 m-18,442 ft)
Russia

In  Frosty morning in Caucasus, oil on canvas, 1832, Private collection

The mountain 

Mount Elbrus (5,642 m -18,510 ft)should not be confused with the Alborz (also called Elburz) mountains in Iran, which also derive their name from the legendary mountain Harā Bərəzaitī in Persian mythology. A dormant volcano, Elbrus forms part of the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia, near the border with Georgia. Elbrus has two summits, both of which are dormant volcanic domes. With its slightly taller west summit, the mountain stands at 5,642 metres ; the east summit (see painting above) is 5,621 metres (18,442 ft). The lower east summit was first ascended on 10 July 1829 by Khillar Khachirov, a Karachayguide for an Imperial Russian army scientific expedition led by General Emmanuel, and the higher in 1874 by an British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove and including Frederick Gardner, Horace Walker, and the Swiss guide Peter Knubel of St. Niklaus in the canton Valais. While there are differing authorities on how the Caucasus are distributed between Europe and Asia, most relevant modern authorities define the continental boundary as the Caucasus watershed, placing Elbrus in Europe due to its position on the north side in Russia. Mount Elbrus was formed more than 2.5 million years ago. The volcano is currently considered inactive. Elbrus was active in the Holocene, and according to the Global Volcanism Program, the last eruption took place about AD 50. Mount Elbrus also called Karachay-Balkar is the highest mountain in Europe, and the seven highest summit in the world. The seven 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), Vinson Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m) in Australia.

The painter
Ilya Zankovsky was a russian painter and graphic artist who studied as a noncredit student in the Imperial Academy of Arts (IAKh, 1862–1863) and who did not finish the course. Zankovsky lived in Tiflis, served in the Military topographic department of the Caucasus military region. He painted landscapes of the Caucasus (Mount Elbrus (above), Georgian military road, The Darial Gorge, From the main mountain range, Mount Ushba. Hunters halt). He worked a lot in watercolor. His works were shown at the exhibitions of the Caucasian Society for Encouragement of Fine Arts, the Society for mutual aid of Caucasian artists, the Society of Russian Watercolorists, and at the Autumn exhibitions in the halls of the IAKh. Zankovsky taught in the Drawing School under the Caucasian Society for Encouragement of Fine Arts in 1880s–1910s.
In 2009 an exhibition of Zankovsky’s works was held in Moscow. Works by Ilya Zankovsky are in many museum collections, including the State Russian Museum, Odessa Fine Arts Museum, Omsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts named after M. A. Vrubel, and Dagestan Museum of Local History.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT KOSCIUSZKO BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

EUGENE VON GUERARD (1811-1901)
Mount Kosciuszko (2, 228 m - 7,310 ft)
Australia

In North east view from the top of Mt Kosciusko, 1866, colour lithograph, 44.0 × 59.6 cm-
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

The mountain 

On earth, there are two mountains named Mount Kosciuszko. One is located in Antartica continent and the other in Australia (Oceania continent). 

In Australia, Mount Kosciuszko (2,228 m - 7,310 ft) is a mountain located on the Main Range of the Snowy Mountains in Kosciuszko National Park, part of the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves, in New South Wales  and is located west of Crackenback and close to Jindabyne.

Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain in Australia.

Mount Kosciuszko was named by the Polish explorer Paul Edmund Strzelecki in 1840, in honour of the Polish national hero and hero of the American Revolutionary War General Tadeusz Kościuszko, because of its perceived resemblance to the Kościuszko Mound in Kraków. The spelling "Mount Kosciuszko" was officially adopted in 1997 by the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales, Australia. 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 Mt Blanc (4,808m)

The Painter 

Johann Joseph Eugene von Guerard was an Austrian-born artist, active in Australia from 1852 to 1882. Known for his finely detailed landscapes in the tradition of the Düsseldorf school of painting, he is represented in Australia's major public galleries, and is referred to in the country as Eugene von Guerard.

In 1852 von Guerard arrived in Victoria, Australia, determined to try his luck on the Victorian goldfields. As a gold-digger he was not very successful, but he did produce a large number of intimate studies of goldfields life, quite different from the deliberately awe-inspiring landscapes for which he was later to become famous. Realizing that there were opportunities for an artist in Australia, he abandoned the diggings and was soon undertaking commissions recording the dwellings and properties of wealthy pastoralists.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC BY J.M.W. TURNER

 

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851)

Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)

  France - Italy  border

 In  Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc, 1803, Oil on Canvas,  92 x 123.2 cm, 

The Dallas Museum of Art (Gift of Nancy Hamon) 

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.

Moreabout Mont Blanc

The painter 

The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.

More about Turner 

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

ELBRUS PAINTED BY VASILY VERESHCHAGIN

 

VASILY VERESHCHAGIN (1842-1904)
Mount Elbrus (5,642 m - 18,510 ft)
Russia

The mountain
Mount Elbrus (Эльбру́с) also called Karachay-Balkar (Минги таy) is the highest mountain in Europe, and the seven highest summit in the world. The seven 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), Vinson Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m) in Australia.
Mount Elbrus should not be confused with the Alborz (also called Elburz) mountains in Iran, which also derive their name from the legendary mountain Harā Bərəzaitī in Persian mythology.
A dormant volcano, Elbrus forms part of the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia, near the border with Georgia. Elbrus has two summits, both of which are dormant volcanic domes. With its slightly taller west summit, the mountain stands at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft); the east summit is 5,621 metres (18,442 ft). The lower east summit was first ascended on 10 July 1829 by Khillar Khachirov, a Karachayguide for an Imperial Russian army scientific expedition led by General Emmanuel, and the higher in 1874 by an British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove and including Frederick Gardner, Horace Walker, and the Swiss guide Peter Knubel of St. Niklaus in the canton Valais.
While there are differing authorities on how the Caucasus are distributed between Europe and Asia, most relevant modern authorities define the continental boundary as the Caucasus watershed, placing Elbrus in Europe due to its position on the north side in Russia.
More about Mount Elbrus

The painter
Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (Васи́лий Васи́льевич Вереща́гин) transcribed in English as "Basil Verestchagin", was one of the most famous Russian war artists and one of the first Russian artists to be widely recognized abroad. The graphic nature of his realist scenes led many of them to never be printed or exhibited. In 1864 he proceeded to Paris, where he studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme, though he dissented widely from his master's methods. In the Paris Salon of 1866 he exhibited a drawing of Dukhobors chanting their Psalms. In the next year he was invited to accompany General Konstantin Kaufman's expedition to Turkestan. He was an indefatigable traveler, returning to St. Petersburg in late 1868, to Paris in 1869, back to St. Petersburg later in the year, and then back to Turkestan at the end 1869 via Siberia. In 1871, he established an atelier in Munich, and made a solo exhibition of his works at the Crystal Palace in London in 1873.
More about the painter 

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Wandering Vertexes 2020
A blog by Francis Rousseau

CERRO ACONCAGUA BY LEO WEHRLI

 

LEO WEHRLI (1870–1854)

Cerro Aconcagua (6, 961m - 22,838ft) 

Argentina

In Aconcagua, von der Cumbre de Uspallata, photo1897, hand colorized by Anna Wehrli-Frey 1918,

ETH Library, Zurich 

The mountain
Cerro Aconcagua (6,961 meters -22,838 ft) is the highest mountain outside of Asia and by extension the highest point in both the Western Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.
Aconcagua is not a volcano.
The origin of the name is contested; it is either from the Mapuche "Aconca-Hue", which refers to the Aconcagua River, the Quechua "Ackon Cahuak", meaning "Sentinel of Stone", or Quechua "Anco Cahuac", meaning "White Sentinel" or the Aymara "Janq'u Q'awa" meaning "White Ravine", "White Brook".
Aconcagua is located in the Andes mountain range, in the Mendoza Province, Argentina, and lies 112 kilometers (70 mi) northwest of its capital, the city of Mendoza and 108 km (67 mi) from Santiago de Chile (the capital of Chile). The summit is in fact located about 5 kilometers from San Juan Province and 15 kilometers from the international border with Chile; its nearest higher neighbor is Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush, 16,520 kilometers (10,270 mi) away.
Aconcagua is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. The 7 summits (which are obviously 8 !)... are :  Mt Everest (8,848m),  Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m), Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Vinson Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m). Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass.
The mountain and its surroundings are part of the Aconcagua Provincial Park. The mountain has a number of glaciers. The largest glacier is the Ventisquero Horcones Inferior at about 10 km long, which descends from the south face to about 3600 m altitude near the Confluencia camp. Two other large glacier systems are the Ventisquero de las Vacas Sur and Glaciar Este/Ventisquero Relinchos system at about 5 km.

The photographer
Leo Wehrli was a Swiss geologist, professor and explorer. After studying music, botany, chemistry, mineralogy, petrography and geology in Berlin and Zurich, Wehrli became assistant to Albert Heim. Immediately after completing his thesis, he left for Argentina with the famous Carl Emanuel Burckhardt in 1896. Accredited by the La Plata Museum and the government of Argentina, he explored the Andes he crossed at least five times during a stay of two years. His work was more particularly oriented on the delimitation of the border between Argentina and Chile after the agreement signedbetween these two countries in 1881 and on the determination of the property of mountain peaks, ridge lines and basins slopes.
After his return to Switzerland, he worked between 1900 and 1935 as a teacher and then lecturer for the Geol. Centralblatt in Berlin ; between 1901 and 1912, he wrote nearly 500 articles. He made other trips through Europe and North Africa (Egypt) before going back to Argentina again in 1938. He has summarized his research results in numerous articles, notably in the Geographic Lexicon of Switzerland. He participated in the founding of the Zurich Adult Education Center and gave lectures there from 1921 to 1953. From 1931 to 1951 he was a member of the Swiss Alpine Club SAC commission for the Central Library and has was president for 14 years.
Wehrli left a collection of 15,000 slides, some of which were hand-colored by his wife, born Anna Frey. A large part of the works is made available online by the photographic archives of the ETH-Bibliothek in Zurich.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT KAZBEK PHOTOGRAPHED IN 1889 BY VITTORIO SELLA

 

VITTORIO SELLA (1859-1943)

Mount Kazbek  (5,047m - 16, 558ft)

Russia - Georgia border

In Expedition in Caucasus, photo on gelatin print, 1889

The mountain
Mount Kazbek (5,047m - 16, 558ft) or Mkinvartsveri (in Georgian) or Bashlam (in Vainkah) is a dormant stratovolcano and one of the major mountains of the Caucasus located in the Kazbegi District of Georgia, just south of the border with Russia. It is the third highest peak in Georgia (after Mount Shkhara and Janga) and the seventh highest summit in the Caucasus Mountains. Kazbek is also the second highest volcanic summit in the Caucasus, after Mount Elbrus. The summit lies directly to the west of the town of Stepantsminda and is the most prominent geographic feature of the area. Mount Kazbek is the highest peak of Eastern Georgia.
The region is highly active tectonically, with numerous small earthquakes occurring at regular intervals. An active geothermal/hot spring system also surrounds the mountain.
Kazbek is a potentially active volcano, built up of trachyte and sheathed with lava, and has the shape of a double cone, whose base lies at an altitude of 1,770 m (5,800 feet). Kazbek is the highest of the volcanic cones of the Kazbegi volcanic group which also includes Mount Khabarjina (3,142 m).
Owing to the steepness of its slopes, the glaciers of Kazbek are not very large. The total combined area of all of Kazbek's glaciers is 135 km2. The best-known glacier is the Dyevdorak (Devdaraki), which creeps down the north-eastern slope into a gorge of the same name, reaching a level of 2,295 meters (7,530 feet). Kazbek's other glaciers include the Mna, Denkara, Gergeti, Abano, and Chata. The recent collapse of the Kolka Glacier, located in a valley between Mt. Jimara and Kazbek in the year 2002 was attributed to solfatara volcanic activity along the northern slope of the mountain, although there was no eruption. In addition to the 2002 event, a massive collapse of the Devdaraki Glacier on the mountain's northeastern slope which occurred on August 20, 2014, led to the death of seven people. The glacier collapse dammed the Terek River in the Daryal Gorge and flooded the Georgian Military Highway.

The photographer
Vittorio Sella is a mountain italian climber and photographer who took his passion for mountains from his uncle, Quintino Sella, founder of the Italian Alpine Club.  He accomplished many remarkable climbs in the Alps, the first wintering in the Matterhorn and Mount Rose (1882) and the first winter crossing of Mont Blanc (1888).
He took part in various expeditions outside Italy:
- Three in the Caucasus in 1889, 1890 and 1896 where a summit still bears his name;
- The ascent of Mount Saint Elias in Alaska in 1897
- Sikkim and Nepal in 1899
- Possibly climb Mount Stanley in Uganda in 1906 during an expedition to the Rwenzori
- Recognition at K2  and Mustagh Tower in 1909
- In Morocco in 1925.

More about Vittorio Sella 

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC BY JULES-LOUIS-PHILIPPE COIGNET

 

JULES-LOUIS-PHILIPPE COIGNET (1798-1860)

 The Mont Blanc  (4,808m -15,777 ft)

 France Italy border

In Vue de Saint-Gervais,1843, Private collection 

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.

More about the Mont Blanc 

The painter  

Jules Louis Philippe Coignet was  was a noted french landscape painter who had studied under Jean-Victor Bertin. He travelled a good deal in his own country as well as elsewhere in Europe and the East, and produced a considerable number of views. A regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon exhibitions, he was awarded a gold medal there in 1824 and was given state recognition by being made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1836.
As a painter, Coignet holds a middle place between the Idealists and the Realists, and his work is remarkable for the combination of vigour and delicacy in the effects of light and shade, for poetical feeling, for a firm brush, and occasionally for grandeur of conception. This is particularly evident in "The Ruins of the Temple of Paestum", now in Munich's Neue Pinakothek. There are times too when his paintings have an atmospheric, almost Impressionist effect. One example is the coastal sunset in the Louvre;  another is the pastel "Grey weather over the sea" (1848) in the Dijon Fine Arts Museum.
Following the 1824 exhibition in Paris of John Constable's paintings, Coignet began painting outside in the forest of Fontainebleau and encouraged his students to do the same. One of his specialities was painting tree 'portraits', of which there are many examples, both as finished paintings and as sketches in oil paint. Two notable examples are the ancient oak, with a dolmen and meditating monk in the background, in the Quimper museum  and the dramatic "Oak tree and reeds" in the Musée Jean de La Fontaine at Château-Thierry.  As a pioneer of open air painting (la peinture de plein air), Coignet has been counted a member of the Barbizon school, the artists associated with the village of Barbizon, where he had painted long before they settled there. In fact one of the minor members of this school, the genre painter Ferdinand Chaigneau, was a pupil of Coignet's.
In addition to producing many water-colours, pastels and etchings, he wrote a book on landscape painting and published in 1825 a series of sixty Italian views.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT EREBUS (5) BY EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON

 

EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON (1872-1912)

Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft)

Antarctica (Ross Island)

 In  Mountain range, McMurdo Strait, watercolor, 7.4 x 11.3 cm, Private collection 

The mountain
Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft), not to be confused with Mount Elbrus is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley) and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth highest ultra mountain on an island, located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes: Mount Terror, Mount Bird, and Mount Terra Nova.
More about the mountain

The artist
Edward Adrian Wilson, nicknamed "Uncle Bill" was an English physician, polar explorer, natural historian, painter and ornithologist. Wilson took part in two British expeditions to Antarctica, the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) and the tragic Terra Nova Expedition (1907-1912), both under the leadership of Scott.
More about the artist 

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau