JEBEL BOUKORNINE BY ALBERT MARQUET

 ALBERT MARQUET (1875–1947)

Jebel Boukornine (546 m -1791 ft) 

Tunisia

In  Le canal de Tunis, oil on canvas, private collection 

The mountain
Jebel Boukornine (جبل بوقرنين‎), also spelled Djebel Bou Kornine or Mount Bou Kornine, is a 576-meter mountain in northern Tunisia, overlooking the Gulf of Tunis and Hammam Lif city.
It consists of folded and faulted outcrops of Jurassic limestone.  Its name "bou kornine" comes from Tunisian Arabic meaning "the one with two horns", originally from the punic language as "ba'al kornine", meaning "lord with two horns". It owes its name to the two highlights of altitude 576 and 493 meters at the top. During the times of ancient Carthage, the mountain was considered sacred and religious rituals were conducted there.
The massif is part of Boukornine National Park, covering area of 1939 ha and protecting many species of plants and animals. The mountain slopes are covered Aleppo pine and cedar. Djebel Ressas about 30 km to the southwest is a taller peak at 795 m.

The painter
Albert Marquet was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement. He initially became one of the Fauve painters and a lifelong friend of Henri Matisse. In 1890 Marquet moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work.  Marquet began studies in 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris under Gustave Moreau, the famous symbolist artist. In 1905 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. Dismayed by the intense coloration in these paintings, critics reacted by naming the artists the "Fauves", i.e. the wild beasts. Although Marquet painted with the fauves for years, he used less bright and violent colours than the others, and emphasized less intense tones made by mixing complementaries, thus always as colors and never as grays.
From 1907 to his death, Marquet alternated between working in his studio in Paris (a city he painted a lot of times) and many parts of the European coast and in North Africa. He was most involved with Algeria and Algiers and Tunisia. He remained also impressed particularly with Naples and Venice where he painted the sea and boats, accenting the light over water. During his voyages to Germany and Sweden he painted the subjects he usually preferred: river and sea views, ports and ships, but also cityscapes.
Matisse said : "When I look at Hokusai, I think of Marquet—and vice versa ... I don't mean imitation of Hokusai, I mean similarity with him".

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA BY EL GRECO

EL GRECO  (1540-1614) 

Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft) 

Egypt

 

1. In Mount Sinaï, oil and tempera on panel,3 7cm x 23, 8cm , 1568, The Modena Triptych (back panels)
Galleria Estense, Modena, Italy 

2. In Mount Sinaï  oil and tempera on panel, 41 x 47,5 cm., c. 1570-72, 

 Historical Museum of Crete, Iraklion

About the painting

The first painting is the central back panel of the  Modena Triptych painted is 1568 triptych (three panel painting) by the artist El Greco, who was also known as Doménikos Theotokópoulos. This portable altarpiece is painted on both sides and has an Italian Renaissance frame. The front depicts the Adoration of the Shepherds, a Christian knight being crowned by Christ in glory, and the Baptism of Jesus. The back panels show the Annunciation to Mary, Mount Sinai, and Adam and Eve. The back panel shows pilgrims on the way to the Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt as if on their way to Heaven.

The second painting was probably made for the antiquarian Fulvio Orsini, librarian to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, in whose palace the artist lived from 1570 to 1572. It shows the peaks of Mount Sinai, a place sacred to Judaism and Christianity, of special significance for Eastern Orthodoxy, and revered by Muslims. At the centre is Mount Horeb, where Moses received the tablets of the Ten Commandments from God. On the left is Mount Epistene. The peak on the right is St. Catherine's Mount, where the early Christian Martyr Catherine had been buried. The small citadel at the foot of Mount Horeb is the monastery that to this day bears her name.
The St. Catherine's Monastery is venerated as the spiritual home of Byzantine Orthodoxy and it was a great centre of pilgrimage. In the painting, on the left are three Western pilgrims, while on the right is a group of Eastern pilgrims with camels.
The view of the holy site is based on engravings of Mount Sinai which could be found in travel books. El Greco painted a similar view on the reverse of the Modena Triptych.

The painter 

Doménikos Theotokópoulos (Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a famous Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, normally signing his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής Krēs, Cretan.

El Greco was born in the Kingdom of Candia, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance taken from a number of great artists of the time, notably Tintoretto.

 In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school.  He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.

El Greco painted many of his paintings on fine canvas and employed a viscous oil medium. He painted with the usual pigments of his period such as azurite, lead-tin-yellow, vermilion, madder lake, ochres and red lead, but he seldom used the expensive natural ultramarine.
El Greco regarded color as the most important and the most ungovernable element of painting, and declared that color had primacy over form. Francisco Pacheco, a painter and theoretician who visited El Greco in 1611, wrote that the painter liked "the colors crude and unmixed in great blots as a boastful display of his dexterity" and that "he believed in constant repainting and retouching in order to make the broad masses tell flat as in nature".
In his mature works El Greco demonstrated a characteristic tendency to dramatize rather than to describe.] The strong spiritual emotion transfers from painting directly to the audience. According to Pacheco, El Greco's perturbed, violent and at times seemingly careless-in-execution art was due to a studied effort to acquire a freedom of style.  El Greco's preference for exceptionally tall and slender figures and elongated compositions, which served both his expressive purposes and aesthetic principles, led him to disregard the laws of nature and elongate his compositions to ever greater extents, particularly when they were destined for altarpieces.  The anatomy of the human body becomes even more otherworldly in El Greco's mature works; for The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception El Greco asked to lengthen the altarpiece itself by another 1.5 feet (0.46 m) "because in this way the form will be perfect and not reduced, which is the worst thing that can happen to a figure'". A significant innovation of El Greco's mature works is the interweaving between form and space; a reciprocal relationship is developed between the two which completely unifies the painting surface. This interweaving would re-emerge three centuries later in the works of Cézanne and Picasso.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) or Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā (in arab : "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"), also known as Mount Horeb or Jebel Musa (a similarly named mountain in Morocco), is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinai. The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region.
It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629 m - 8,625 ft), the highest peak in Egypt.
Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from differing depths.
There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.
The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

PAEKTU MOUNTAIN IN MANCHU VERITABLE RECORDS

MANCHU VERITABLE RECORDS (1636-1736)

Paektu Mountain (2,744 m - 9,003 ft) 

China - North Corea border

From the Manchu Veritable Records with the names of Mount Paektu in Manchu, Chinese and Mongolian, ink on paper,  1 January 1635 

The volcano
Paektu Mountain (2,744 m - 9,003 ft) also known as Baekdu Mountain, and in China as Changbai Mountain (长白山) is an active stratovolcano on the Chinese–North Korean border. It is the highest mountain of the Changbaiand Baekdudaegan ranges.

Koreans assign a mythical quality to the volcano and its caldera lake, considering it to be their country's spiritual home. It is the highest mountain in North Korea, the Korean Peninsula, and Northeast China.
A large crater lake, called Heaven Lake, is in the caldera atop the mountain. The caldera was formed by the VEI 7 "Millennium" or "Tianchi" eruption of 946, which erupted about 100–120 km3 (24–29 cu mi) of tephra. This was one of the largest and most violent eruptions in the last 5,000 years (alongside the Minoan eruption, the Hatepe eruption of Lake Taupo in around AD 180, the 1257 eruption of Mount Samalas near Mount Rinjani, and the 1815 eruption of Tambora).
The mountain plays an important mythological and cultural role in the societies and civil religions of both contemporary Korean states, for instance, it is mentioned in both of their national anthems and is depicted on the national emblem of North Korea.

In 2011, the Government of North Korea invited volcanologists James Hammond of Imperial College, London and Clive Oppenheimer of the University of Cambridge, to study the mountain for recent volcanic activity. Their project was continuing in 2014 and expected to last for another "two or three years".

The documents
The first known record of the Manchu origin myth is found in Qing documents dating from 1636. These documents provide an official account of the origin of the Aisin Gioro lineage, including the story of the ancestor Bukūri Yongšon, who is depicted as the Manchu primogenitor, from his birth to his ascension to the throne. This article argues that the Manchu origin myth reflected the dynamics of Manchu identity, which shifted from constructing a Manchu group to securing Manchu rule during the period from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries. By tracing the development of this myth from its earliest version in the seventeenth century to four different versions that appeared by the mid-eighteenth century, written in both Manchu and Chinese, this article endeavors to shed new light on how the Manchus saw themselves, their ancestor, and their empire.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT OYAMA PAINTED UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE / 歌川 広重

UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE  / 歌川 広重  (1797-1858),

Mount Oyama  (1,252 m - 4,108 ft)

Japan

In  Mount Oyama from Series Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces, 1853, woodblock, 

34.29 cm x 23.02 cm, The San Diego Museum of Art

About the series
Hiroshige started the series in the seventh month of Kaei 6 (Sept 1853) and completed it in the third month of Ansei 3 (May 1856). The first 42 prints were completed and published in 1853.

 Thereafter, Hiroshige slowed down the pace of publishing: Buzen Province, listed as the 61st print, was issued in 1854; another seventeen were published in the 9th month of 1855; and the final nine prints in the third to fifth months of 1856.
A contents page was also published in 1856 after the final prints; The ordering of the prints on the contents page differs slightly from the actual print publication ordering. The new ordering on the contents page grouped the prints according to the 8 travel routes in Old Japan.
Hiroshige based many of his designs on old Japanese guidebooks called meishō zue. In particular, at least 26 of the designs are believed to have been based on drawings from the 8 volume series of guidebooks called Sansui Kikan (Exceptional Mountain and Water Landscapes) written and illustrated by Fuchigami Kyokkō published from 1800-1802. As well as several from drawings in the early volumes of the Hokusai Manga series. 

The mountain
Mount Ōyama  also Mount Afuri  or Mount Kunimi (1,252 - 4,108 ft) mountain situated on the border of Isehara, Hadano and Atsugi in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Together with Mount Tanzawa and other mountains in the Tanzawa Mountains it forms the Tanzawa-Ōyama Quasi-National Park. Mount Ōyama is a popular sightseeing spot in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Mount Ōyama has long been regarded as a holy mountain and object of worship.  Religiously motivated mountain climbing has been practiced since the Hōreki era (1751–1764) and the various paths leading there were called Ōyama Kaidō . Today this name survives as the pseudonym of Route 246.
At the top of the mountain is the head office of the Ōyama-Afuri Shrine . Lower down the mountain is the lower shrine and the Ōyama-dera. Afuri refers to the high amount of rain and clouds associated with the mountain. Farmers pray at Ōyama-Afuri Shrine to the rain god.
The mountain is also known as the Guardian of the Land (Kunimi-yama).

The artist
Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川 広重), also know as Andō Hiroshige (安藤 広重), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his landscapes, such as the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (see above) and The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō; and for his depictions of birds and flowers. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868). The popular Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series by Hokusai was a strong influence on Hiroshige's choice of subject, though Hiroshige's approach was more poetic and ambient than Hokusai's bolder, more formal prints.
Hiroshige produced over 8,000 works
He dominated landscape printmaking with his unique brand of intimate, almost small-scale works compared against the older traditions of landscape painting descended from Chinese landscape painters such as Sesshu. The travel prints generally depict travelers along famous routes experiencing the special attractions of various stops along the way. They travel in the rain, in snow, and during all of the seasons. In 1856, working with the publisher Uoya Eikichi, he created a series of luxury edition prints, made with the finest printing techniques including true gradation of color, the addition of mica to lend a unique iridescent effect, embossing, fabric printing, blind printing, and the use of glue printing (wherein ink is mixed with glue for a glittery effect).
For scholars and collectors, Hiroshige's death marked the beginning of a rapid decline in the ukiyo-e genre, especially in the face of the westernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Hiroshige's work came to have a marked influence on Western painting towards the close of the 19th century as a part of the trend in Japonism. Western artists closely studied Hiroshige's compositions, and some, such as Vincent van Gogh or Claude Monet, painted copies of Hiroshige's prints.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT TABOR PAINTED BY ANSELM KIEFFER

ANSELM KIEFER (bn.1945)

Mount Tabor (575 m -1,886 ft)

Israel (Galilee)

In Mount Tabor, 2009) Oil, emulsion, acrylic, and shellac on canvas. 149 cmx 149 cm 

Courtesy  Gagosian Gallery

The mountain
Mount Tabor (575 m - 1,886 ft), (not to be confused with Mount Thabor int he French Alps ) is located in Lower Galilee, Israel, at the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley, 11 miles (18 km) west of the Sea of Galilee. Mount Tabor is a Inselberg : an isolated hill or small mountain rising abruptly from gently sloping or level surrounding land, and is not volcanic.
In the Hebrew Bible (Joshua, Judges), Mount Tabor is the site of the Battle of Mount Tabor between the Israelite army under the leadership of Barak and the army of the Canaanite king of Hazor, Jabin, commanded by Sisera.
In Christian tradition, Mount Tabor is the site of the Transfiguration of Jesus.
Mount Tabor is shaped almost like half a sphere, suddenly rising from rather flat surroundings and dominating the town in the plain below, Kfar Tavor. At the top of the mountain are two Christian monasteries, one Greek Orthodox on the northeast side and one Roman Catholic on the southeast side. The Catholic church at the top is easily visible from afar.
At the base it is almost fully surrounded by the Arab villages of Daburiyya, Shibli, and Umm al-Ghanam. Mount Tabor is located off Highway 65, and its summit is accessible by road via Shibli. A hiking tracks starts from the Bedouin village Shibli and is about five kilometers long. It is part of the Israel National Trail.

The painter 
Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.
In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are particularly reflected in his work; for instance, the painting "Margarethe" (oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Paul Celan's well-known poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").
His works are characterised by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture's dark past, and unrealised potential, in works that are often done on a large, confrontational scale well suited to the subjects. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and/or names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or historical places. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with the movements New Symbolism and Neo–Expressionism.
Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1992. Since 2008, he has lived and worked primarily in Paris and in Alcácer do Sal, Portugal.

 In 2018, he was awarded Austrian citizenship.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

EL CHIMBORAZO (2) PAINTED BY LUIS A. MARTINEZ

LUIS ALFREDO MARTINEZ (1869-1909) 

El Chimborazo (6,263 m -20,548 ft) 

Ecuador 

 In Entrada al Oriente, Chimborazo  - Museo del Banco Central, Cuenca, Ecuador

The mountain
Chimborazo (6,263 m -20,548 ft) is a currently inactive stratovolcano in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes ans the highest mountain in Ecuador and the Andes north of Peru ; it is higher than any more northerly summit in the Americas. Chimborazo is not the highest mountain by elevation above sea level, but its location along the equatorial bulge makes its summit the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center.
Chimborazo is at the main end of the Ecuadorian Volcanic Arc, north west of the town of Riobamba. Chimborazo is in la Avenida de los Volcanes (the Avenue of Volcanoes) west of the Sanancajas mountain chain. Carihuairazo, Tungurahua, Tulabug, and El Altar are all mountains that neighbor Chimborazo. The closest mountain peak, Carihuairazo, is 5.8 mi (9.3 km) from Chimborazo. There are many microclimates near Chimborazo, varying from desert in the Arenal to the humid mountains in the Abraspungo valley.
Its last known eruption is believed to have occurred around A.D. 550.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, it was thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth (measured from sea level), and such reputation led to many attempts on its summit during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1746, the volcano was explored by French academicians from the French Geodesic Mission. Their mission was to determine the sphericity of the Earth. Their work along with another team in Lapland established that the Earth was an oblate spheroid rather than a true sphere. They did not reach the summit of Chimborazo.
In 1802, during his expedition to South America, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, accompanied by Aimé Bonpland and the Ecuadorian Carlos Montufar, tried to reach the summit. From his description of the mountain, it seems that before he and his companions had to return suffering from altitude sickness they reached a point at 5,875 m, higher than previously attained by any European in recorded history. (Incans had reached much higher altitudes previously; see Llullaillaco). In 1831, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault and Colonel Hall reached a new "highest point", estimated to be 6,006 m.
On 4 January 1880, the English climber Edward Whymper reached the summit of Chimborazo. The route that Whymper took up Chimborazo is now known as the Whymper route. Edward Whymper, and his Italian guides Louis Carrel and Jean-Antoine Carrel, were the first Europeans to summit a mountain higher than 20,000 feet. As there were many critics who doubted that Whymper had reached the summit, later in the same year he climbed to the summit again, choosing a different route (Pogyos) with the Ecuadorians David Beltrбn and Francisco Campaсa.

The painter
Luis Alfredo Martínez Holguín was an Ecuadorian writer, painter and politician, with a marked liberal tendency and a friend of President Eloy Alfaro. Among the public positions he held are deputy to the National Congress for the province of Tungurahua, governor of the same province and undersecretary of the Ministry of Public Instruction. In the literary field, he is considered the initiator of realism in the country. In painting he was one of the few romanticist painters and the first costumbristas who enriched the arts during the first republican decades.
Luis Alfredo Martínez was attracted throughout his life to landscaping. In the prologue of one of his books he wrote: "I do not belong to any school, I am profoundly realistic, and I paint nature as it is and not as conventions teach."
Many of his paintings are outside the country: two of them in the Library of Congress of the United States , two in the Vatican Museum and one in Rio de Janeiro.
Since 1980, the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Ambato holds a painting contest named after Luis Alfredo Martínez, the "Luis A. Martínez Painting Salon".
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

NEVADO HUASCARAN IN VINTAGE POSTCARD 1946

VINTAGE POSTCARD 

Nevado Huascaràn (6,778m - 22,205ft) 

Peru 

In Postal Peru de Foto Sotopaytor, 1946 

The mountain
Nevado Huascaràn  (6,778m - 22,205ft) is a mountain in the Peruvian province of Yungay, situated in the Cordillera Blanca range of the western Andes. Nevado Huascaràn is the highest point in Peru, the northern part of Andes (north of Lake Titicaca) and in all of the Earth's Tropics. Huascaràn is the fourth highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere and South America after Aconcagua, Ojos del Salado, and Monte Pissis.
The mountain has two distinct summits, the higher being the south one, Huascaran Sur (6,768 m- -22,205 ft). and the north summit, Huascaran Norte (6, 654m - 21, 831ft). The core of Huascarбn, like much of the Cordillera Blanca, consists of Cenozoic era granite.
Huascaran gives its name to Huascaran National Park which surrounds it, and is a popular location for trekking and mountaineering. The Huascaran summit is one of the points on the Earth's surface farthest from the Earth's center, closely behind the farthest point, Chimborazo in Ecuador.
The mountain was named after Huбscar, a 16th-century Inca emperor who was the Sapa Inca of the Inca empire.
The summit of Huascaran is the place on Earth with the smallest gravitational force.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

THE FITZ ROY / CERRO CHALTEN PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)

The Fitz Roy / Cerro Chalten (3,405 m- 11, 171 ft)

Chile - Argentina border

In Fitz Roy and Laguna Sucia, sunlight on glacier, 2018, 

Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London, oil on gesso on panel, 57 x 57 cm.

The painter
James Hart Dyke’s work is centred on landscape painting, from the domesticity of paintings of country houses to paintings generated from physically demanding expeditions over remote mountains. James has also undertaken a series of projects including accompanying HRH The Prince of Wales as the official artist on royal tours, working as ‘artist in residence’ for The British Secret Intelligence Service, working as an artist embedded with the British Forces in war zones, working for the producers of the James Bond films and working as ‘artist in residence’ for Aston Martin. These projects required him to respond in many different ways and have allowed him to experiment with more graphic forms of painting influenced by his studies as an architect at the Royal College of Art. His portraits have been shown at the National Portrait Gallery and at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibitions.

The mountain 
Fitz Roy / Cerro Chalten (3,405m- 11, 171 ft) is a mountain located near El Chaltèn village, in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in Patagonia, on the border between Argentina and Chile. First climbed in 1952 by French alpinists Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone, " The Fitz Roy " remains among the most technically challenging mountains for mountaineers on Earth. Mount Fitz Roy is the basis for the Patagonia clothing logo following Yvon Chouinard's ascent and subsequent film in 1968.
Argentine explorer Francisco Moreno first saw the mountain on 2 March 1877. He named it Fitz Roy, in honour of Robert FitzRoy, who, as captain of the HMS Beagle had travelled up the Santa Cruz River in 1834 and charted large parts of the Patagonian coast.
Cerro is a Spanish word meaning mountain, while Chaltèn comes from a Tehuelche (Aonikenk) word meaning "smoking mountain", due to a cloud that usually forms around the mountain's peak. Fitz Roy, however, was only one of a number of peaks the Tehuelche called Chaltèn.
It has been agreed by Argentina and Chile that their international border detours eastwards to pass over the main summit, but a large part of the border to the south of the summit, as far as Cerro Murallуn, remains undefined.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

VOLCÀN RUMIÑAHUI PAINTED BY RAFAEL SALAS

RAFAEL SALAS (1824-1906)

Volcàn Rumiñahui  (4,721 m  - 15,489 ft)

Ecuador

In Vista del volcán Rumiñahui de la laguna de Limpiopungo, oil on canvas, Museo Arocena

The volcano
Rumiñahui  (4,721 m - 15,489 ft)  meaning in local language "stone eye", "stone face", "rock eye" or "rock face", is a dormant, heavily eroded stratovolcano. Situated in the Andes Cordillera mountains 40 km south of Quito, Ecuador, it is overshadowed by its famous neighbour Cotopaxi.

Rumiñahui  has three peaks (as shown in the painting above) . The three high peaks are called Rumiñahui North (4,721 m), Rumiñahui Central (4, 631 m) and Rumiñahui South (4, 696 m). 

The painter
Rafael Salas was an important Ecuadorian landscape and genre painter of nineteenth century South America neoclassicism. He was the last son of the famous Salas artists dynasty among which his half brother Ramon Salas ( 1815-1880), the fist professor a t Academy of fine Arts of Quito and responsive for the taste of Costumbrismo; and above all their father Antonio Salas (1795-1860) a colonial artist specialized in religious themes like La Muerte de San José and La Negacion de San Pedro in the Cathedral of Quito.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

OZZA MONS PHOTOGRAPHED BY SOVIET VENERA PROGRAM

SOVIET VENERA 13 PROGRAM  (October 1981 - Mars 1982)

Ozza  Mons (No elevation data)

VENUS

The mountain 
Ozza Mons (No elevation data) is an inactive volcano on planet Venus near the equator.  Ozza mons is name after Uzza, a goddess of fertility and venerated femininity in pre-Islamic Arabia. She had her statue in the Kaaba where she was supposed to reside. Four temporally variable surface hotspots were discovered at the Ganiki Chasma rift zone near volcanoes Ozza Mons and Maat Mons in 2015, suggestive of present volcanic activity.  However, interpreting these types of observations from above the cloud layer correctly is a challenge.

The program 
Venera 13 (Венера) , meaning Venus 13) was a probe in the Soviet Venera program for the exploration of Venus. Venera 13 and 14 were identical spacecraft built to take advantage of the 1981 Venus launch opportunity and launched 5 days apart, Venera 13 on 30 October 1981 at 06:04 UTC and Venera 14 on 4 November 1981 at 05:31 UTC, both with an on-orbit dry mass of 760 kg (1,680 lb).As the cruise stage flew by Venus the bus acted as a data relay for the lander and then continued on into a heliocentric orbit. It was equipped with a gamma-ray spectrometer, UV grating monochromator, electron and proton spectrometers, gamma-ray burst detectors, solar wind plasma detectors, and two-frequency transmitters which made measurements before, during, and after the Venus flyby. The bus continued to provide data until at least 25 April 1983.
Leonid Ksanfomaliti of Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (a contributor to the Venera mission) and Stan Karaszewski of Karas, suggested signs of life in the Venera images in an article published in Solar System Research. According to Ksanfomaliti, certain objects resembled a "disk", a "black flap" and a "scorpion" which "emerge, fluctuate and disappear", referring to their changing location on different photographs and traces on the ground.
Engineers familiar with the probe have identified the moving "disk" as actually being the two lens caps ejected from the lander. Rather than a single object that had moved between two different places, they are simply two inanimate similar-looking objects in different places. The other "objects" are ascribed to image processing artifacts and do not appear in the original photography.
The editors of Solar System Research published an editorial comment and a number of commentary articles from other scientists in their September 2012 publication of Issue 5, Volume 46 of the journal. That issue also includes a second article from Ksanfomaliti, in which he claims to identify several other life forms and speculates regarding the apparent rich diversity of life around the landing site.
These claims have been refuted by the Live Science website.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT TACOMA / RAINIER BY HIROSHI YOSHIDA / 吉田 博

HIROSHI YOSHIDA / 吉田 博 (1876-1950)

Mount Tacoma also called Mont Rainier (4,392 m -14,411 ft) 

United States of America (Washington)

In Mt. Rainier USA- Woodblock print - 1925

The mountain
Mount Rainier, Mount Tacoma, or Mount Tahoma (4,392 m-14,411 ft) is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a large active stratovolcano located 54 miles (87 km) south-southeast of Seattle. It is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States and the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
Mount Rainier was first known by the Native Americans as Talol, or Tacoma or Tahoma. One hypothesis of the word origin is ("mother of waters"), in the Lushootseed language spoken by the Puyallup people. Another hypothesis is that "Tacoma" means "larger than Mount Baker" in Lushootseed: "Ta", larger, plus "Koma", Mount Baker. Other names originally used include Tahoma, Tacobeh, and Pooskaus.
The current name was given by George Vancouver, who named it in honor of his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. The map of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 refers to it as "Mt. Regniere".
This peak is located just east of Eatonville and just southeast of Seattle and Tacoma. Mount Rainier is ranked third of the 128 ultra-prominent mountain peaks of the United States.

More about Mont Tacoma /Rainier 

The painter
Hiroshi Yoshida (not to be confused with Toshi Yoshida) was born in 1876. He began his artistic training with his adoptive father in Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture. Around the age of twenty, he left Kurume to study with Soritsu Tamura in Kyoto, subsequently moving to Tokyo and the tutelage of Shotaro Koyama. Yoshida studied Western-style painting, winning many exhibition prizes and making several trips to the United States, Europe and North Africa selling his watercolors and oil paintings. In 1902, he played a leading role in the organization of the Meiji Fine Arts Society into the Pacific Painting Association. His work was featured in the exhibitions of the state-sponsored Bunten and Teiten. While highly successful as an oil painter and watercolor artist, Yoshida turned to printmaking upon learning of the Western world’s infatuation with ukiyo-e.
Following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Yoshida embarked on a tour of the United States and Europe, painting and selling his work. When he returned to Japan in 1925, he started his own workshop, specializing in landscapes inspired both by his native country and his travels abroad. Yoshida often worked through the entire process himself: designing the print, carving his own blocks, and printing his work. His career was temporarily interrupted by his sojourn as a war correspondent in Manchuria during the Pacific War. Although he designed his last print in 1946, Yoshida continued to paint with oils and watercolors up until his death in 1950.
Yoshida was widely traveled and knowledgeable of Western aesthetics, yet maintained an allegiance to traditional Japanese techniques and traditions. Attracted by the calmer moments of nature, his prints breathe coolness, invite meditation, and set a soft, peaceful mood. All of his lifetime prints are signed “Hiroshi Yoshida” in pencil and marked with a jizuri (self-printed) seal outside of the margin. Within the image, most prints are signed “Yoshida” with brush and ink beside a red “Hiroshi” seal.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT WASHINGTON BY JOHN MARIN

JOHN MARIN  (1870-1953)

Mount Washington (1, 916m - 6, 286ft)

United States of America (New Hampshire) 

The mountain 

Mount Washington (1, 916m - 6, 286ft) is the highest point in the northeastern United States. It is located in the White Mountains in the county of Coos. Most of the mountain is located in the White Mountain National Forest and Mount Washington State Park.
The mountain is called Agiocochook, the "abode of the great spirit," by the Amerindians. A scientific expedition led by geologist Dr. Cutler named Mount Washington in 1784.
While the western slope, which climbs the Cog Railway, is regular from its base, the other slopes are more complex. To the north, Great Gulf, the largest glacial circus in the mountains, is surrounded by the Northern Presidentials, namely Clay, Jefferson, Adams and Madison Mountains. These peaks reach far beyond the alpine zone beyond the tree line. The imposing Chandler Ridge extends northeast from the top of Mount Washington to form the southern wall of the amphitheater. It is paced by a motorway to the summit.
The first European to mention the mountain is Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524, who sees it from the Atlantic Ocean and describes it as a "high mountain of the interior". Irishman Darby Field says he made his first ascent in 1642.

More about Mount Washington 

The painter
John Marin was a seminal American modernist painter. He was one of the first Americans to employ techniques of abstraction in his calligraphic depictions of landscapes and city streets. Along with Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe, Marin helped introduce a new aesthetic model for American painters. “I must for myself insist that when finished, that is when all the parts are in place and are working, that now it has become an object and will therefore have its boundaries as definite as the prow, the stern, the sides, and bottom bound as a boat” he once reflected.
Marin started his career in art later in life, graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1901 at the age of 30. In 1905, he travelled to Europe, lived in Paris (1905-1909) where he developed his signature watercolor technique and met the artist Edward Steichen. It was Steichen that introduced his work to the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who mounted Marin’s first solo show in 1909, and financially supported the artist over the remainder of his career.
Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
He developed a more dynamic, fractured style from 1912 to depict the interaction of conflicting forces, and gradually evolved summary ways of rendering his vivid impressions of sea, sky, mountains or the skyscrapers of Manhattan. In the 1920s worked almost exclusively in watercolour; after 1930 painted largely in oils.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE WHITES PAINTED BY CHILDE HASSAM

CHILDE HASSAM (1859-1935)

White Mountains (1,917m - 6,288ft) 

United States of America (New Hampshire) 

In Spring In White Mountains, oil on canvas

The mountains
The White Mountains (1,917m - 6,288ft) also called The Whites are a mountain range covering about a quarter of the state of New Hampshire and a small portion of western Maine in the United States. They are part of the northern Appalachian Mountains and the most rugged mountains in New England. The range is heavily visited due to its proximity to Boston and, to a lesser extent, New York City and Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Most of the area is public land, including the White Mountain National Forest and a number of state parks. Its most famous mountain is Mount Washington (1,917 m- 6,288-ft) which is the highest peak in the Northeastern U.S. and for 76 years held the record for fastest surface wind gust in the world (231 miles per hour (372 km/h) in 1934 .
The White Mountains also include the Franconia Range, Sandwich Range, Carter-Moriah Range and Kinsman Range in New Hampshire, and the Mahoosuc Range straddling the border between it and Maine. In all, there are 48 peaks within New Hampshire as well as one (Old Speck Mountain) in Maine over 4,000 feet (1,200 m), known as the four-thousand footers.
The Whites are known for a system of alpine huts for hikers operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club. The Appalachian Trail crosses the area from southwest to northeast.

The painter
Frederick Childe Hassam was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums. He produced over 3,000 paintings, oils, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs over the course of his career, and was an influential American artist of the early 20th century.
In 1904 and 1908, he traveled to Oregon and was stimulated by new subjects and diverse views, frequently working out-of-doors with friend, lawyer and amateur painter Colonel C. E. S. Wood.
He produced over 100 paintings, pastels, and watercolors of the High Desert, the rugged coast, the Cascades, scenes of Portland. As usual, he adapted his style and colors to the subject at hand and the mood of place, but always in the Impressionist vein. With the art market now eagerly accepting his work, by 1909 Hassam was enjoying great success, earning as much as $6,000 per painting. His close friend and fellow artist J. Alden Weir commented to another artist : "Our mutual friend Hassam has been in the greatest of luck and merited success. He sold his apartment studio and has sold more pictures this winter, I think, than ever before and is really on the crest of the wave. So he goes around with a crisp, cheerful air."

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT ROBSON BY ARTHUR P. COLEMAN

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)
Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) 

Canada (British Columbia)

  In Mount Robson glacier -cutting steps, oil on canvas

The mountain 

Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) is the most prominent mountain in North America's Rocky Mountain range; it is also the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. The mountain is located entirely within Mount Robson Provincial Park of British Columbia, and is part of the Rainbow Range. Mount Robson is the second highest peak entirely in British Columbia, behind Mount Waddington in the Coast Range. The south face of Mount Robson is clearly visible from the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16), and is commonly photographed along this route.

Mount Robson was likely named after Colin Robertson, who worked for both the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company at various times in the early 19th century, though there was confusion over the name as many assumed it to have been named for John Robson, an early premier of British Columbia. The Texqakallt, a Secwepemc people and the earliest inhabitants of the area, call it Yuh-hai-has-kun (The Mountain of the Spiral Road). Other unofficial names include Cloud Cap Mountain.

In 1893, five years after the expedition of A.P. Coleman to Athabasca Pass and the final settling of the mistaken elevations of Mt. Hooker and Mt. Brown, Mt. Robson was first surveyed by James McEvoy and determined to be the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. The first documented ascent of Mount Robson, led by the young guide Conrad Kain, at its time the hardest ice face to be climbed on the continent, was achieved during the 1913 annual expedition organized by a large party of Alpine Club of Canada members who made use of the newly completed Grand Trunk Pacific railway to access the area. Prior to 1913, it had been necessary to approach the mountain by pack train from Edmonton or Laggan via Jasper and Lucerne, so only few intrepid explorers had made previous attempts at exploring the mountain. The most famous early ascensionist was the Reverend George Kinney, a founding member of the Alpine Club, who on his twelfth attempt in August 1909 claimed to have reached the summit with local outfitter Donald "Curly" Phillips. A major controversy over this claim and over the implausible nature of his unlikely and dangerous route dominated the discourse within the Alpine Club elite, and he is now generally presumed to have reached the high summit ridge before being turned back at the final ice dome of the peak. Kinney Lake, below the south face, is named in his honour.

The north face of Mount Robson is heavily glaciated and 800 m (2,600 ft) of ice extends from the summit to Berg Glacier. The Berg glacier calves directly into the lake. The Robson Glacier, which fills the cirque and valley between Mount Robson and Mount Resplendent, in the early 1900s fed directly into both Berg lake and Adolphus lake, straddling the Continental Divide and draining thus to both the Arctic and Pacific oceans via the Smoky and Robson Rivers, respectively. It since has receded more than 2 kilometres and is the source of the Robson River only.

The painter 
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian a geologist, professor, minerals prospector, artist, Rockies explorer, backwoods canoeist, world traveller, scientist, popular lecturer, museum administrator, memoirist and...  one of Canada’s most beloved scientist.
Arthur Coleman is a fine example of that rare bird, a polished amateur artist whose drawings and paintings stand comfortably beside those of many professionals. He was active during the time when sketching and painting was ceding to photography the task of recording the visible world. Although he was also a photographer, painting was, for him, both a poetic and a descriptive pursuit, a way of wrapping an artistic expression around a phenomenon he was interested in or moved by. Thus motivated, Coleman's paintings give much joy and command a good deal of respect. The more surprising, perhaps given that he used to introduced himself more as a geologist than a painter.
Coleman travelled throughout the United States for professional conferences as well as geological field work.  He visited many of the major American mountain ranges including: the American Cordillera Mountains (Washington, Oregon and California); the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California and Nevada); Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho); and the Appalachian Mountains (eastern United States). Pleistocene glaciation had extended in Northern Europe as far south as Berlin and London and covered an area of two million square miles. Coleman also visited such countries as India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Scandinavia, Bolivia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In his final years he made two expeditions to the Andes in Colombia, to mountains in Southern Mexico and to two mountains in Central America.  He achieved the first ascent of Castle Mountain in 1884, and in 1907, he was the first white man to attempt to climb Mount Robson. He made a total of eight exploratory trips to the Canadian Rockies, wholly four of them looking for the mythical giants of Hooker and Brown.
 "Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park are named in his honor.
He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT WEBSTER PAINTED BY BENJAMIN CHAMPNEY

BENJAMIN CHAMPNEY (1817-1907)

Mount Webster  (1,192 m -3,911 ft)

United States of America

The mountain 
Mount Webster is (1,192 m -3,911 ft) is located on the border between Coos County and Carroll County, New Hampshire.  Mount Webster is on the western boundary of the Presidential Range - Dry River Wilderness. The Appalachian Trail, a 2,170-mile (3,500-km) National Scenic Trail from Georgia to Maine, runs along the ridge of the Presidentials, across the summit of Webster.

The mountain, formerly called Notch Mountain, is named after Daniel Webster (1782–1852), and is the southwesternmost of the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. Mount Webster is flanked to the northeast by Mount Jackson; to the southwest it faces Mount Willey across Crawford Notch.
The west face of Mount Webster drains directly into the Saco River, thence into the Gulf of Maine at Saco, Maine. The north and southeast faces drain into the Saco via Silver Cascade and Webster Brook respectively.

The Painter 

Benjamin Champney was a painter whose name has become synonymous with White Mountain art of the 19th century. He began his training as a lithographer under celebrated marine artist Fitz Henry Lane at Pendleton's Lithography shop in Boston. Most art historians consider him the founder of the "North Conway Colony" of painters who came to North Conway, New Hampshire and the surrounding area during the second half of the 19th century. His paintings were often used to make chromolithographs that were subsequently sold to tourists who could not afford Champney's originals. He exhibited regularly at the Boston Athenæum and was a founder of the Boston Art Club. 

On August 4, 1888, The White Mountain Echo reported: "Champney's studio is as much visited as ever this summer, and there are many new pictures to see. Of the landscapes, there is a view from the new carriage road up Humphrey's Ledge that is beautiful, and another a scene in Crawford Notch, and still another, a picture of Mount Chocorua from Tamworth; there are some lovely new flower pieces ... But perhaps the very prettiest is the old-fashioned pitcher in the kitchen window ..." 
In 1900, he published an autobiography, Sixty Years' Memories of Art and Artists. 
Examples of his paintings can be viewed today at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord, New Hampshire; the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire; and the Museum of the White Mountains at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

__________________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

VESUVIUS PAINTED BY JOSEPH REBELL

JOSEPH REBELL (1787-1828) 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

In Vesuvio in 1813-15, oil on canvas, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.

The mountain 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.
It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.

More about Vesuvius ...

The painter
Joseph Rebell is an Austrian landscape painter.
After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he stayed in Berne in Switzerland in 1809 and in Milan between 1810 and 1812 at the court of Eugene de Beauharnais and Naples between 1813 and 1815, including the court of Joachim Murat. He then moved to Rome between 1816 and 1824. On this date, he was called to Vienna by Francis I of Austria to run the Belvedere Gallery, where he remained until his death from illness in 1828, when a trip to Dresden.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

COL DE L'ISERAN & CRĒTE DES LESSIÈRES BY CHARLES-HENRI CONTENCIN

CHARLES-HENRI CONTENCIN (1898-1955) 

Col de l'Iseran (2,764 m - 9,068 ft)

Crête des Lessieres (2,986 m - 9,796 ft) 

France (Isère)

The mountain
The Col de l'Iseran  (2,764 m - 9,068 ft) one of the highest road passes in Europe allows the passage from the high Tarentaise (Isere Valley) to the high Maurienne (Arc Valley) by the D. 902 (eg N.202).
The pass itself is open in the lustrous schists that form the ridge of water sharing between Isère and Arc (they belong to the sheet of Méan Martin). The shaly lamination of these layers is generally arranged with a dip gently inclined to the northwest almost in accordance with the bottom, slightly inclined of the high valley of Iseran.
The crest of Leissières ((2,986 m - 9,796 ft)  which dominates it on the western side is orthogonal to the watershed and to the structure of which it gives a natural cut: one sees there appearing the layers of the unit of the Malpasset, characterized by its material sedimentary near the Grande Motte series.

The painter 
Charles-Henri Contencin (1898-1955) is a French painter who painted many landscapes of mountains and high mountains of the great Alpine peaks (mainly Mont Blanc and Massif and the Écrins). His palette is very characteristic. He particularly used the effects of sunrise or sunset over snow or glaciers. Raised in the Bernese Oberland to the age of 10-12 years, it was a lifelong mountain lover. Good climber, he was a member of the French Alpine Club, where he made the connection with the Mountain Painters Society (SPM). He made the First World War in the infantry and he received the War Cross. He then worked in an architectural office and at the Compagnie des chemins de Fer du Nord before joining the french national railways company, the SNCF, where he was responsible for engineering structures.
In addition to his professional designs it is also author of posters and handbills for the railways under the pseudonym "Charles-Henri." He is best known for its mountain paintings and left an important work. After many years of contempt coming mainly from parisian critics and intelligentsia, Contencin is now recognized worldwide as one of the major mountain painters of the 20th century.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LA MEIJE & LES ECRINS BY LÉON & LEVY- LL

LÉON & LEVY - LL (1864-1917)

La Meije (3,984m - 13, 071ft)

France (Isère)

In La Meije et les Ecrins,  Postcard, 1895, MUCEM, Marseille,  France  

The mountains 
La Meije (3,984m- 13, 071ft) is a mountain in the Massif des Écrins range, located at the border of the Hautes-Alpes and Isère départements. It overlooks the nearby village of La Grave, a mountaineering centre and ski resort, well known for its off-piste and extreme skiing possibilities, and also dominates the view west of the Col du Lautaret.
More about La Meije

The photographers
Moyse Leon and Isaac (known as Georges) Lévy began as assistants within the Parisian photographic studio 'Ferrier-Soulier' under the Second Empire. 

They founded their own studio in Paris  in 1864 and sold prints on albumen paper, mainly stereoscopic prints, signed Léon and Lévy 'L.L.'. 

The Leon & Levy firm took part in the 1867 Universal Exhibition where they won the Emperor's Gold Medal. In 1874, the Leon and Levy studio became J. Levy and Co., Isaac Georges Levy being the only company director from that date. On the arrival of Georges Lévy's two sounds in 1895, Ernest and Lucien, the company grew and became Lévy & fils and the photographs conserved the 'L' signature and  the company merged with the publisher Neurdein Frères ("ND Phot.") .

This photographic firm had an intense period of activity, compiling tours (Spain, Portugal, Morocco, America) as well as postcards, all between 1864 and 1917, when the business came to an end.

After the death of Isaac Lévy in 1913, the company  became "Lévy and Neurdein united".

__________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONT VENTOUX PAINTED BY NICOLAS FROMENT

NICOLAS FROMENT  (c.1430-1486), (circle of) 

Mont Ventoux (1, 911 m - 6, 270ft) 

France (Provence)

In Le Rétable des Pérussis  (The Pérussis Altarpiece) 1480, 

oil and gold on wood, (1, 38m x 58.4 cm), 

The MET Museum (not on view)

About the painting
The subject of this large altarpiece, the adoration of the empty cross on Golgatha, is unusual. According to a documented inscription on the lost original frame, the painting was made in 1480 for Aloisius Rudolphe de Pérussis, whose family coat of arms and motto are displayed on the side panels. One of the kneeling donors, presented by John the Baptist and Saint Francis, may be Aloisius himself. Originally from Florence, the Pérussis or Peruzzi took refuge in Avignon after they were exiled by Cosimo de' Medici in 1434. Included in the background landscape is a faithful topographical view of Avignon, its famous brigde  (before it was partially destroyed  in  its middle by floods, an din the background the Mont Ventoux.

The mountain
Mont Ventoux (Ventor in Latin) is located in the French department of Vaucluse (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur). Culminating at 1,911 meters - 6, 270 ft, it is about 25 kilometers long on an east-west for 15 kilometers wide on a north-south axis. Nicknamed the Giant of Provence, it is the culmination of the Monts du Vaucluse, the ultimate link of the Southern Alps and the highest peak of Vaucluse. Its geographical isolation makes it visible over great distances.
Mont Ventoux is as well the linguistic border between the north and south-Occitan.
Its mainly calcareous nature is responsible, in its top part, its deep white color in every season and intense karstification due to erosion by water, with the presence of numerous scree on the south face. Precipitation is particularly abundant in spring and fall. Rainwater seeps into galleries and reflects the level of the variable flow resurgences such as Fontaine de Vaucluse or Source du Groseau.
Mont Ventoux is subject to a Mediterranean dominant weather, sometimes causing scorching temperatures during summer, the altitude offering a wide variety of climates, to the top (continental influence of mountain type), through a temperate climate (mid-slopes). In addition, the north wind can be very violent and the Mistral blows almost half part of the year.
This particular geomorphology and climate make it a rich and fragile environmental site consisting of many levels of vegetation. It is s a biosphere reserve by UNESCO and Natura 2000 site.
If human settlements are found in the foothills in prehistoric times, the first ascent to the summit would work on 26 April 1336, the poet Petrarch from Malaucène on the northern slope. It opens the way later in numerous scientific studies.
Thereafter, for nearly six centuries, Mont Ventoux has been intensely deforested to provide the shipbuilding in Toulon, charcoal manufacturers and sheep farmers. During World War II, the mountain is home to the Ventoux maquis, the french Resistance against Nazis.
Since 1966, the summit is topped with an observation tower over forty meters high topped by a TV and satellite antenna.
While sheep farming has almost disappeared, beekeeping, gardening (especially cherries), viticulture, harvesting of mushrooms including truffles and, to a lesser extent, lavender, are still practiced.
Mont Ventoux is an important symbolic figure of Provence that fed oral or literary works and artistic performances or pictorial map.

The painter
Nicolas Froment  was a French painter of the Early Renaissance.,birn in Uzes and died in Avignon.  Nicolas Froment is one of the most notable representatives of the Second School of Avignon, (École d'Avignon), a group of artists at the court of the Popes in Avignon, who were located there from 1309 to 1411, in Avignon.
He was influenced by the Flemish style that characterizes the last phase of the Gothic.
He undertook to paint an altarpiece 12 February 1470 in Aix for a rich widow called Catherine Spifami; in the center of the panel is a depicting the Death of Mary, and on the side panels, the Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine are shown. He was attributed a number of works from this time, but none of these attributions can be considered reliable.
One of the most interesting work of this group is the Retable des Pérussis or The Pérussis Altarpiece (above).

__________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONTAGNE SAINTE VICTOIRE PAINTED BY PAUL CEZANNE

PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906) 

Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1, 011m - 2, 216 ft)

France (Provences-Alpes-Côte d'Azur)

In  Sainte-Victoire vue à travers l’allée des marronniers du Jas de Bouffan,  oil on canvas, 1885

 Minneapolis Museum of Fine Arts 

The mountain
Mont Sainte-Victoire (1,011 m-3,316ft) also called Mont Venturi is a limestone massif in the South of France, in the region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Located east of Aix-en-Provence, it has experienced international fame, due to the more than 80 works Paul Cézanne did on it. It hosts many hikers, climbers and nature lovers, and is a major element of Aix landscape.
The range of the Sainte-Victoire is located on the Bouches-du-Rhône and Var, and in the towns of Puyloubier, Saint-Antonin-sur-Bayon, Rousset, Châteauneuf-le-Rouge, Beaurecueil, Le Tholonet Vauvenargues, Saint-Marc-Jaumegarde, Pourrières, Artigues and Rians. On the northern side, the D10 crosses the Col de Claps (530 m) and the Col des Portes (631 m). On the southern side, the D 17 walks on the Plateau de Cengle and crossed the Collet blanc de Subéroque (505 m).
The massif rises to the Pic des Mouches (Peak of the Flies) (1,011 m) near the eastern end of the chain, and not at the Croix de Provence (946 m) near the west end and visible from Aix. The Pic des Mouches is one of the highest peaks of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, behind the peak Bertagne which reached an altitude of 1,042 mètres and which is located on the massif of Sainte-Baume.
Sainte-Victoire, as the range of the Sainte Baume, can be considered a special case among the Alpine ranges for the various stages of the formation of its relief associated geological history as well as that of the old Pyrenean-Provençal chain than that of the Western Alps (which have succeeded it).
Indeed, from the former Sainte-Victoire mountain, contemporary of the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous, appeared 15 million years BCE.
Sainte-Victoire, whose calcareous sediments date back to the Jurassic, thus consists of both a Pyrenean-Provencal vestige and of an alpine geology.
The massif is a ensemble of 6525 ha classified since 1983.
The massive hosts several world-famous dinosaur eggs deposits including the Roques-Hautes / Les Grands-Creux on the town Beaurecueil.

The painter
The mount Sainte-Victoire appears to have been the subject of a true love story with the painter (Paul Cézanne). He painted this subject more than 80 times, in oil paintings, watercolors and drawings !
Aix-en Provence (France) painter Paul Cezanne still remains closely linked to his hometown. His studio in Les Lauves remains a place to visit, as if the painter was coming back from one second to the other. But the eternal bond is undoubtedly the series of paintings he did of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. A hobby, a passion, a thread in the painter's work that took place in the latter part of his life, between 1882 and 1906 when he died in Aix. History says that the painter had contracted a nasty pneumonia during a working session on the mountain. This is what can be called 'die on stage'.
Cézanne had a considerable influence on the art of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Acknowledged master of his time, he attended during stays in Paris between 1862 and 1882, the Impressionist band: Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir (who also ended his life in the Provencal brightness), Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and others. He participated in the Impressionist adventure while keeping his personality: it is the time of the shock of the en plein air, easels in the grass, looking for natural light and emotion.
The influence of the Aix painter is recognized in the history of art since it would be the cause of the Cubist movement embodied in 1906 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The first historically so called Cubist painting ' Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' would, a true artistic shock shown by Picasso in 1907 (one year after the death of Cézanne) is today one of the masterpieces of the MoMA in New York.
It is the search of volumes around which leads to the appearance of geometry in landscapes or still lifes of Cézanne.In 20 years, Cézanne pushes his style to express the emotion of the landscape, suggesting the wind, involving movement just like if we can breathe the air of the scene. In his first paintings pf the Sainte Victoire,(in the 1880’s) he expresses the giant aspect of the mountain that dominates the area with his characteristic e way of painting at the time, with a juxtaposition of linear brushstrokes and a range of soft, natural colors. IN the last paintings of the Sainte Victoire, view from Les Lauves, between 1904 and 1906, he shows shots less accurate brushes allowing the shape of the mountain emerge from the canvas like an apparition. That is the whole intention of the artist, show nature as it is without fail to convey emotion.
A true love story…

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2019- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BAGUIO & TUBA MOUNTAINS PAINTED BY FERNANDO AMORSOLO

 FERNANDO AMORSOLO (1882-1972) 

Baguio and Tuba mountains (1, 540m- 5,050 ft)

 Philippines (Luzon) 

In Baguio and Mountains of Tuba  oil on canvas 

The mountains 

Baguio  mountains (1,540m- 5,050 ft) are located in the Cordillera Central mountain range in northern Luzon.  Baguio is also a city, officially is known as the Summer Capital of the Philippines, owing to its cool climate. Baguio was established as a hill station by the United States in 1900 at the site of an Ibaloi village known as Kafagway. It was the United States' only hill station in Asia.

Nowadays, Baguio is classified as a Highly Urbanized City (HUC). It is geographically located within Benguet, serving as the provincial capital from 1901 to 1916, but has since been administered independently from the province following its conversion into a chartered city.

The painter
Fernando Cueto Amorsolo was one of the most important artists in the history of painting in the Philippines.Amorsolo was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes. He is popularly known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light. After graduating from the Univeajor influences on his work. Amorsolo set up his own studio upon his return to Manila and painted prodigiously during the 1920s and the 1930s. His Rice Planting (1922), which appeared on posters and tourist brochures, became one of the most popular images of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Beginning in the 1930s, Amorsolo's work was exhibited widely both in the Philippines and abroad. His bright,optimistic, pastoral images set the tone for Philippine painting before World War II . Except for his darker World War II-era paintings, Amorsolo painted quiet and peaceful scenes throughout his career.
Amorsolo was sought after by influential Filipinos including Luis Araneta, Antonio Araneta and Jorge B. Vargas. Amorsolo also became the favourite Philippine artist of United States officials and visitors to the country. Due to his popularity, Amorsolo had to resort to photographing his works and pasted and mounted them in an album. Prospective patrons could then choose from this catalog of his works. Amorsolo did not create exact replicas of his trademark themes; he recreated the paintings by varying some elements.
His works later appeared on the cover and pages of children textbooks, in novels, in commercial designs, in cartoons and illustrations for the Philippine publications such The Independent, Philippine Magazine, Telembang, El Renacimiento Filipino, and Excelsior. He was the director of the University of the Philippine's College of Fine Arts from 1938 to 1952.
During the 1950s until his death in 1972, Amorsolo averaged to finishing 10 paintings a month. However, during his later years, diabetes, cataracts, arthritis, headaches, dizziness and the death of two sons affected the execution of his works. Amorsolo underwent a cataract operation when he was 70 years old, a surgery that did not impede him from drawing and painting.
After being confined at the St. Luke's Hospital in Quezon City for two months, Amorsolo died at the age of 79 on April 24, 1972. The volume of paintings, sketches and studies of Amorsolo is believed to have reached more than 10,000 pieces. Amorsolo was an important influence on contemporary Filipino art and artists, even beyond the so-called "Amorsolo school." Amorsolo's influence can be seen in many landscape paintings by Filipino artists, including early landscape paintings by abstract painter Federico Aguilar Alcuaz.
In 2003, Amorsolo's children founded the Fernando C. Amorsolo Art Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving Fernando Amorsolo's legacy, promoting his style and vision, and preserving a national heritage through the conservation and promotion of his works.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau