PUIG NEULOS PAINTED BY ANDRE DERAIN

ANDRE DERAIN (1880-1954)   

Puig Neulos (1,256m - 4,121ft)

Montagnes à Collioure, 1905 

 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

The mountain 

The Puig Neulós (1,256m - 4,121ft) (or peak Neulos  or Néoulous) is the highest point  of the Albera Range. Puig Neulós is a Catalan name that has been kept as it is in French. Puig refers to a summit or a mountain rounded, Neulós is analogous to the French "nebulous" or "clouded". There is a mention of the summit in a 1322 text in the Latin form Nebuloso Podio, which has exactly the same meaning.

Puig Neulós marks the border between France and Spain, divided between the towns of Laroque-des-Albères, Sorède in the Pyrenees-Orientales and La Jonquera in the province of Girona (Spain). On the summit, there are some antennas for a digital TV and radio transmitter and there is a paved road on the French side (from el Perthus) restricted to military use. 

Below Puig Neulos, on a line of ridges, is the Roc du Midi, very visible, and on the west  the Fouirous rock southwest exposed outcrop. The summit, as well as most of the southern side of the range is part of the National  Park of Albera Range Natural Reserve.

The painter

André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.

Derain and Matisse worked together through the summer of 1905 in the Mediterranean village of Collioure;  the painting above  showing Collioure mountains and Mount Puig Neulos in the background is dated precisely from that year. Later that year they displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne. The vivid, unnatural colors led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to derisively dub their works as les Fauves, or "the wild beasts", marking the start of the Fauvist movement. In March 1906, the noted art dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London to produce a series of paintings with the city as subject. In 30 paintings (29 of which are still extant), Derain presented a portrait of London that was radically different from anything done by previous painters of the city such as Whistler or Monet. With bold colors and compositions, Derain painted multiple pictures of the Thames and Tower Bridge. These London paintings remain among his most popular work. Art critic T.G Rosenthal: "Not since Monet has anyone made London seem so fresh and yet remain quintessentially English. Some of his views of the Thames use the Pointillist technique of multiple dots, although by this time, because the dots have become much larger, it is rather more simply the separation of colours called Divisionism and it is peculiarly effective in conveying the fragmentation of colour in moving water in sunlight."

In 1907 art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler purchased Derain's entire studio, granting Derain financial stability. He experimented with stone sculpture and moved to Montmartre to be near his friend Pablo Picasso and other noted artists. 

At Montmartre, Derain began to shift from the brilliant Fauvist palette to more muted tones, showing the influence of Cubism and Paul Cézanne.(According to Gertrude Stein, there is a tradition that Derain discovered and was influenced by African sculpture before the Cubists did.  Derain supplied woodcuts in primitivist style for an edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's first book of prose, L'enchanteur pourrissant (1909). He displayed works at the Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich in 1910, in 1912 at the secessionist Der Blaue Reiter and in 1913 at the seminal Armory Show in New York. He also illustrated a collection of poems by Max Jacob in 1912.

During the German occupation of France in World War II, Derain lived primarily in Paris and was much courted by the Germans because he represented the prestige of French culture. Derain accepted an invitation to make an official visit to Germany in 1941, and traveled with other French artists to Berlin to attend a Nazi exhibition of an officially endorsed artist, Arno Breker. Derain's presence in Germany was used effectively by Nazi propaganda, and after the Liberation he was branded a collaborator and ostracized by many former supporters.

A year before his death, he contracted an eye infection from which he never fully recovered. He died in Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France in 1954 when he was struck by a moving vehicle.

Derain's London paintings were the subject of a major exhibition at the Courtauld Institute from 27 October 2005 to 22 January 2006.

HALE CRATER MOUNTAINS SEEN BY NASA MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER

NASA MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER MISSION (2005-2015)

Hale Crater Mountains  (150 kms diameter -  93 mile diameter)

Planet Mars  (Argyre quadrangle)

1 & 2. Hale crater mountains slope seeping waters

3. Hale crater mountains gullies.

The "mountains" 

Hale is a 150 km x 125 km (93 mi x 78 mi) crater located at 35.7°S, 323.4°E, just north of Argyre basin on Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury, often nicknamed "The red planet" because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth.

The Hale crater is situated in the Argyre quadrangle of the planet.  

On 28 September 2015 NASA confirmed the seasonal existence of liquid water in Hale crater. The salts in the water (magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate, sodium perchlorate,...) lower its freezing and melting point to 203 K (−70 °C or −94 °F), which is near the average summer night temperature. 

Hale was created by an asteroid roughly 35 km (22 mi) across that impacted at an oblique angle about 3.5–3.8 billion years ago. The rim and ejecta are eroded and show smaller impacts, but subsequent deposits have covered up small craters within it.  On the southern rim of Hale, parts of the crater wall have moved downslope towards the crater's centre. The surface shows a network of fluvial channels which may have been caused by running water.

It is named after George Ellery Hale, an astronomer from Chicago who determined in 1908 that sunspots are the result of magnetic activity.
The wall of Hale Crater has a large number of gullies. Some are pictured below in an image from HiRISE. Unlike, some other gullies on Mars, these are in light-toned materials. Research published in the journal Icarus has found pits in Hale Crater that are caused by hot ejecta falling on ground containing ice. The pits are formed by heat forming steam that rushes out from groups of pits simultaneously, thereby blowing away from the pit ejecta.
Gullies occur on steep slopes, especially craters. Gullies are believed to be relatively young because they have few, if any craters, and they lie on top of sand dunes which are young. Usually, each gully has an alcove, channel, and apron. Although many ideas have been put forward to explain them, the most popular involve liquid water either coming from an aquifer or left over from old glaciers.
There is evidence for both theories. Most of the gully alcove heads occur at the same level, just as one would expect of an aquifer. Various measurements and calculations show that liquid water could exist in an aquifer at the usual depths where the gullies begin. One variation of this model is that rising hot magma could have melted ice in the ground and caused water to flow in aquifers. Aquifers are layer that allow water to flow. They may consist of porous sandstone. This layer would be perched on top of another layer that prevents water from going down (in geological terms it would be called impermeable). The only direction the trapped water can flow is horizontally. The water could then flow out onto the surface when it reaches a break, like a crater wall. Aquifers are quite common on Earth. A good example is "Weeping Rock" in Zion National Park Utah.
On the other hand, much of the surface of Mars is covered by a thick smooth mantle that is thought to be a mixture of ice and dust. This ice-rich mantle, a few yards thick, smoothes the land, but in places it has a bumpy texture, resembling the surface of a basketball. Under certain conditions the ice could melt and flow down the slopes to create gullies. Because there are few craters on this mantle, the mantle is relatively young.
Changes in Mars's orbit and tilt cause significant changes in the distribution of water ice from polar regions down to latitudes equivalent to Texas. During certain climate periods water vapor leaves polar ice and enters the atmosphere. The water comes back to ground at lower latitudes as deposits of frost or snow mixed generously with dust. The atmosphere of Mars contains a great deal of fine dust particles. Water vapor will condense on the particles, then fall down to the ground due to the additional weight of the water coating. When ice at the top of the mantling layer goes back into the atmosphere, it leaves behind dust, which insulates the remaining ice.

The camera
The image above, has been captured by the HiRISE  (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The 65 kg (143 lb), $40 million USD instrument was built under the direction of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. It consists of a 0.5 m (19.7 in) aperture reflecting telescope, the largest so far of any deep space mission, which allows it to take pictures of Mars with resolutions of 0.3 m/pixel (about 1 foot), resolving objects below a meter across.
HiRISE has imaged Mars landers on the surface, including the ongoing Curiosity and Opportunity rover missions.
HiRISE was designed to be a High Resolution camera from the beginning. It consists of a large mirror, as well as a large CCD camera. Because of this, it achieves a resolution of 1 microradian, or 0.3 meter at a height of 300 km. (For comparison purposes, satellite images on Google Mars are available to 1 meter). It can image in three color bands, 400–600 nm (blue-green or B-G), 550–850 nm (red) and 800–1,000 nm (near infrared or NIR).
HiRISE incorporates a 0.5-meter primary mirror, the largest optical telescope ever sent beyond Earth's orbit. The mass of the instrument is 64.2 kg.
Red color images are at 20,048 pixels wide (6 km in a 300 km orbit), and Green-Blue and NIR are at 4,048 pixels wide (1.2 km). These are gathered by 14 CCD sensors, 2048 x 128 pixels. HiRISE's onboard computer reads out these lines in time with the orbiter's ground speed, meaning the images are potentially unlimited in height. Practically this is limited by the onboard computer's 28 Gbit (3.5 GByte) memory capacity. The nominal maximum size of red images (compressed to 8 bits per pixel) is about 20,000 × 126,000 pixels, or 2520 megapixels and 4,000 × 126,000 pixels (504 megapixels) for the narrower images of the B-G and NIR bands. A single uncompressed image uses up to 28 Gbit. However, these images are transmitted compressed, with a typical max size of 11.2 Gigabits. These images are released to the general public on the HiRISE website via a new format called JPEG 2000.
To facilitate the mapping of potential landing sites, HiRISE can produce stereo pairs of images from which the topography can be measured to an accuracy of 0.25 meter.
The HiRISE camera is designed to view surface features of Mars in greater detail than has previously been possible. It has provided a closer look at fresh martian craters, revealing alluvial fans, viscous flow features and ponded regions of pitted materials containing breccia clast.  This allows for the study of the age of Martian features, looking for landing sites for future Mars landers, and in general, seeing the Martian surface in far greater detail than has previously been done from orbit. By doing so, it is allowing better studies of Martian channels and valleys, volcanic landforms, possible former lakes and oceans, and other surface landforms as they exist on the Martian surface.
The general public is allowed to request sites for the HiRISE camera to capture (see HiWish). For this reason, and due to the unprecedented access of pictures to the general public, shortly after they have been received and processed, the camera has been termed "The People's Camera".
 The pictures can be viewed online, downloaded, or with the free HiView software.

LUSHAN / 庐山 PAINTED BY SHEN ZOU

SHEN ZOU (1427-1509)  

Lushan / 庐山  or Mount Lu (1,474m- 4,834ft) 

China

In Lofty Mount Lu  painted in 1467, National Palace Museum, Taipei

The mountain 

Mount Lu or Lushan  (庐山) is situated in the northern part of Jiangxi province in southeastern China, and is one of the most renowned mountains in the country. Mount Lushan is one of the spiritual centres of Chinese civilization. Buddhist and Taoist temples, along with landmarks of Confucianism, where the most eminent masters taught, blend effortlessly into a strikingly beautiful landscape which has inspired countless artists who developed the aesthetic approach to nature found in Chinese culture.

The oval-shaped mountains are about 25 km long and 10 km wide, and neighbors Jiujiang city and the Yangtze River to the north, Nanchang city to the south, and Poyang Lake to the east. Its highest point is Dahanyang Peak (1,474m- 4,834ft) and is one of the hundreds of steep peaks that towers above a sea of clouds that encompass the mountains for almost 200 days out of the year. Mount Lu is known for its grandeur, steepness, and beauty, and is part of Lushan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996, and a prominent tourist attraction, especially during the summer months when the weather is cooler.

Lushan was a summer resort for Western missionaries in China. Absalom Sydenstricker, the father of Pearl Buck was one of the first five missionaries to acquire property in the Kuling Estate on the mountain.
Mount Lu was once dubbed the xiadu ("summer capital") of the Republic of China. Chiang Kai-Shek, China's leader at the time, would frequently spend his summers here. In June 1937, Zhou Enlai, then a major leader in the Communist Party, met with Chiang on the mountain to discuss a united front against the Japanese invasion. In July 1937, Chiang Kai-shek announced his intention for a full mobilization for war against Japan from Mount Lu. In 1946, following the war, the U.S. special diplomatic mission led by General George C. Marshall met with Chiang Kai-Shek to discuss the role of post-WWII China.
Mao Zedong convened three large conferences of senior party officials at Mount Lu, in 1959, 1961, and 1970. The 1959 conference became known as the Lushan Conference. The meeting saw the purge of decorated Chinese Civil War and Korean War general Peng Dehuai, who was critical of Mao's Great Leap Forward policies. The 1970 Lushan Conference took place during the Cultural Revolution, and marked the increasing antagonism between those loyal to Mao and those loyal to his chosen successor Lin Biao.
Mount Lushan has rich cultural and natural heritage, which authentically preserve the unique elements and characteristics of Mount Lushan’s creation, development and inheritance, including cultural, historical and natural elements such as ancient monuments and sites, villas, ancient stone inscriptions, paintings and poems dating to different historic periods, and streams and waterfalls, peaks and valleys. Temporary or partial damage of the ecological environment can be quickly and effectively restored. Restoration and intervention have followed principle of retaining the historic condition of the heritage in terms of design, materials, methods, and techniques. Thus, the property retains its historical authenticity, which permanently preserves the value of this “famous cultural mountain”.
In 1982, Mount Lushan became one of the first National Scenic Areas and one of the First Class National Nature Reserves, with the property area and buffer zone delimited. All attributes of Mount Lushan are effectively protected by the laws and regulations pertaining to the management of national scenic areas, and to the protection of cultural heritage and its setting. Any measures and projects that may significantly impact the heritage value must be authorized by the relevant national authorities.
The Lushan Scenic and Historic Interest Administrative Bureau focused on sustainable development of the property, and made increased investments in conservation and management. Both mid-term and long-term master plans for protecting the property have been made. Special attention has been placed on protecting the cultural heritages and their settings as a whole, and how to protect them more scientifically. Additional efforts have been made towards researching rational use of the property. Broad cooperation and exchanges have been undertaken. Conservation measures are strictly carried out. Environmental management and development projects are being tightly controlled. The right balance between heritage conservation and tourism development has been maintained, making it possible for the sustainable development of the property.

The artist 

Shen Zhou (Chinese: 沈周), courtesy name Qi'nan (启南) and Shitian (石田), was a Chinese painter in the Ming dynasty,  not be confused with another Chinese artist named Shen Zhou who lived between 1848 and 1903.  Shen Zhou’s scholarly upbringing and artistic training had instilled in him a reverence for China’s historical tradition that influenced both his life and his art from an early age. He was accomplished in history and the classics, and his paintings reveal a disciplined obedience to the styles of the Yuan dynasty, to China’s history, and to the orthodox Confucianism that he embodied in his filial life. He is most famous for his landscapes and for his “boneless” renderings of flowers, which are meticulously created in the style of the Yuan masters. However, he did not always paint within strict boundaries. His inherited prosperity afforded him the luxury of painting independently of patrons, and he did so in a way that, while revealing his historical influence, was uniquely his own. Shen possessed a large collection of paintings from the late Yuan and early Ming, which he and his scholar-painter colleagues used as models in forging the revivalist approach of the Wu style. He frequently combined experimental elements with the more rigid styles of the Yuan masters. Much of his work was done in collaboration with others, combining painting, poetry, and calligraphy at gatherings with his literati friends. It was upon these ideals that his Wu School was founded. For Wu painters, painting was a meditation, rather than an occupation. Shen Zhou never coveted his paintings, although they were frequently coveted and imitated by others. Through Shen Zhou’s eyes, a painting was not a commodity, but the very extension of the painter himself.

MOUNT ELEPHANT (DJERRINALLUM) BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

EUGENE VON GUERARD (1811-1901)

Mount Elephant or Djerrinallum (240 m -790 ft) 

Australia

In Mount Elephant, 1857, oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Australia

The mountain
Mount Elephant is a  (240 m -790 ft) conical breached scoria cone formed by a dormant volcano, located 1 km from the town of Derrinallum in southwestern Victoria, Australia. It is a prominent landmark that forms the eastern gateway to the Kanawinka Geopark from the Hamilton Highway at Derrinallum. Scoria cones are small volcanoes with relatively steep sides, usually formed as the result of a single major episode of volcanic activity. Lava lakes often form in the centre of scoria cones; if the lava in such a lake breaches the side of the cone, the result is a breached scoria cone, such as Mount Elephant. There are approximately 200 breached scoria cones in Victoria.
Mount Elephant was once quarried for its red/black scoria, and evidence of the quarry is visible at the base of its cone. The scoria that was quarried from Mount Elephant was used to make many of the roads and buildings in and around the town of Derrinallum.
The volcano is thought to have last erupted between 5,000 and 20,000 years ago making Mount Elephant dormant. During early European settlement, the mountain was known as Swagman's Lighthouse. The mountain was privately owned until 2000, when it was purchased by the Trust for Nature and the local community. The aim is to revegetate the area and promote local tourism.
In the nineteenth century, an Aboriginal name for Mount Elephant, Gerinyelam, was recorded by a colonist. During European colonization in 1830s, Mount Elephant was located within the territory of a Djargurd Wurrung clan, Teerinyillum gundidj.
According to James Dawson, "The Mount Shadwell tribe and its language are called 'Kirae wuurong,' 'blood lip' with Kuurndit ["member of"] affixed for a member of the tribe. Its territory commences at the Hopkins Hill sheepwash on the Hopkins River, and extends to Mount Fyans, Mount Elephant, Cloven Hills, Minninguurt, Mount Noorat, Keilambete Lake, Framlingham aboriginal station, and up the east side of the Hopkins River to starting point."
The photographer, Fred Kruger (1831-1888) took a photograph of King Tom, a survivor of the "Mount Elephant Tribe", at Coranderrk Settlement in the Yarra Valley (see Board for protection of Aborigines Album No. 131, Museum of Victoria.). King Tom lived at Meningoort Station, about 25 km south-west of Mount Elephant, north of Camperdown and west of Lake Bookaar. His mia-mia was near the homestead, and was painted by Robert Dowling in 1856. The painting, entitled "Aborigines in a bark hut: King Tom of the Mount Elephant tribe", is in the collection of the National Library of Australia. Meningoort Station still exists in Corangamite Shire and has remained in the McArthur family since Scottish immigrant, Peter McArthur, squatted on the land in 1837.
According to the Trust for Nature, "Even well before early European settlement, the local Indigenous community, the Djerrinallum gundidj, reputedly knew Mount Elephant as Djerrinallum – meaning 'Hill of Fire'. With their presence and a local history dating back as far as 45,000 years the Indigenous peoples of the area will certainly have witnessed a few of the eruptions in the region, including Mount Elephant. Therefore, it is of little wonder that some feature prominently in local Dreaming stories."
Source: 
- Mount Elephant website 

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.
By the early 1860s, von Guerard was recognized as the foremost landscape artist in the colonies, touring Southeast Australia and New Zealand in pursuit of the sublime and the picturesque.  He is most known for the wilderness paintings produced during this time, which are remarkable for their shadowy lighting and fastidious detail.  Indeed, his View of Tower Hill in south-western Victoria was used as a botanical template over a century later when the land, which had been laid waste and polluted by agriculture, was systematically reclaimed, forested with native flora and made a state park. The scientific accuracy of such work has led to a reassessment of von Guerard's approach to wilderness painting, and some historians believe it likely that the landscapist was strongly influenced by the environmental theories of the leading scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Others attribute his 'truthful representation' of nature to the criterion for figure and landscape painting set by the Düsseldorf Academy.

In 1866 his Valley of the Mitta Mitta was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; in 1870 the trustees purchased his Mount Kosciusko shown in this article was titled "Northeast view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko", which is actually  "from Mount Townsend". 

In 2006, the City of Greater Geelong purchased his 1856 painting View of Geelong for A$3.8M. His painting, Yalla-y-Poora, is in the Joseph Brown Collection on display at the National Gallery of Victoria.  The State Library of New South Wales in Sydney holds an extensive collection of working sketchbooks by Eugene von Guerard, as well as larger drawings and paintings and a diary. The sketchbooks cover regions as diverse as Italy and Germany, Tasmania, New South Wales, and of course, Victoria.

In 1870 von Guerard was appointed the first Master of the School of Painting at the National Gallery of Victoria, where he was to influence the training of artists for the next 11 years. His reputation, high at the beginning of this period, had faded somewhat towards the end because of his rigid adherence to picturesque subject matter and detailed treatment in the face of the rise of the more intimate Heidelberg School style. Amongst his pupils were Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts. Von Guerard retired from his position at the National Gallery School the end of 1881 and departed for Europe in January 1882. In 1891 his wife died. Two years later, he lost his investments in the Australian bank crash and he lived in poverty until his death in Chelsea, London, on 17 April 1901.
Several paintings of mountains of Australia and New Zealand by Eugène von Guerard are published in this blog....

Sources: 

- Dictionnary of Australian Artists, Oxford University Press, 1992

- Wikipedia Eugene Von Guerard page 

MOUNT VINSON PAINTED BY DAVID ROSENTHAL

DAVID ROSENTHAL (bn. 1953)
Mount Vinson  (4,892 m - 16,050 ft)
Antarctica

The mountain 

Mount Vinson  (4,892 m -16,050 ft)is the highest peak in Antarctica  and it is part of the seven highest summits  in the world among:  

Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.
Mount Vinson lies in the north part of Vinson Massif’s summit plateau in the south portion of the main ridge of the Sentinel Range about 2 kilometres  north of Hollister Peak. It was first climbed in 1966. An expedition in 2001 was the first to climb via the Eastern route, and also took GPS measurements of the height of the peak. As of February 2010, 1,400 climbers have attempted to reach the top of Mount Vinson.

Vinson Massif  is a large mountain massif that is 21 km (13 mi) long and 13 km (8.1 mi) wide and lies within the Sentinel Range of the Ellsworth Mountains. It overlooks the Ronne Ice Shelf near the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. The massif is located about 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) from the South Pole. Vinson Massif was discovered in January 1958 by U.S. Navy aircraft. In 1961, the Vinson Massif was named by USACAN, for Carl G. Vinson, United States congressman from the state of Georgia, for his support for Antarctic exploration. On Nov. 1, 2006, USACAN declared Mount Vinson and Vinson Massif to be separate entities.

Climbing 

In 1963, two groups within the American Alpine Club, one led by Charles Hollister and Samuel C. Silverstein, M.D., then in New York, and the other led by Peter Schoening of Seattle, Washington, began lobbying the National Science Foundation to support an expedition to climb Mount Vinson. The two groups merged in spring 1966 at the urging of the National Science Foundation and the American Alpine Club, Nicholas Clinch was recruited by the American Alpine Club to lead the merged expeditions. Officially named the American Antarctic Mountaineering Expedition 1966/67, the expedition was sponsored by the American Alpine Club and theNational Geographic Society,, and supported in the field by the U.S. Navy and the National Science Foundation Office of Antarctic Programs. Ten scientists and mountaineers participated in AAME 1966/67. In addition to Clinch they were Barry Corbet, John Evans (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN), Eiichi Fukushima (University of Washington, Seattle, WA), Charles Hollister, Ph.D. (Columbia University, New York, NY), William Long, Ph.D. (Alaska Methodist University, Anchorage, AK), Brian Marts, Peter Schoening, Samuel Silverstein, M.D. (Rockefeller University, New York, NY) and Richard Wahlstrom.

In the months prior to its departure for Antarctica the expedition received considerable press attention, primarily because of the reports that Woodrow Wilson Sayre was planning to fly in a Piper Apache piloted by Max Conrad, the "flying Grandfather", with four companions into the Sentinel Range to climb the Mount Vinson. Sayre had a reputation for problematic trips as a result of his unauthorized, unsuccessful, and nearly fatal attempt to climb Mount Everest from the North in 1962. His unauthorized incursion into Tibet led China to file an official protest with the U.S. State Department. In the end, the purported race did not materialize as Conrad had difficulties with his plane. According to press reports, he and Sayre were still in Buenos Aires on the day the first four members of AAME 1966/67 reached Mount Vinson's summit.

In December 1966 the Navy transported the expedition and its supplies from Christchurch, New Zealand to the U.S. base at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, and from there in a ski-equipped C-130 Hercules to the Sentinel Range. All members of the expedition reached the summit of Mount Vinson. The first group of four climbers summited on December 18, 1966, four more on December 19, and the last three on December 20.

On August 17, 2006, from nomination by Damien Gildea of the Omega Foundation, US-ACAN approved naming the subsidiary peaks south of Mount Vinson for the AAME 1966/67 members Nicholas Clinch, Barry Corbet, Eiichi Fukushima, Charles Hollister, Brian Marts, Samuel Silverstein, Peter Schoening and Richard Wahlstrom. Other peaks in the Sentinel Range had previously been named for John Evans and William Long.

Gavin Bate ascending Mount Vinson in 2000

The climb of Vinson offers little technical difficulty beyond the usual hazards of travel in Antarctica, and as one of the Seven Summits, it has received much attention from well-funded climbers in recent years. Multiple guide companies offer guided expeditions to Mount Vinson, at a typical cost of around $30,000 per person, including transportation to Antarctica from Chile.

Reference

 - Mount Vinson Wikipedia Page 

The artist 
David Rosenthal is known as an Antarctic Painter, Painter of Ice, Arctic Artist, Alaskan Artist and an Extreme Artist. He has been lured to cold climates regularly to record snow, ice, and landscapes. Davids paintings of glaciers and icebergs are astoundingly realistic and at the same ethereal at the same time. However his work also includes much more than ice, icebergs and glaciers... Cordova, Alaska is the place David Rosenthal calls home. As an artist and art teacher David has taught and continues to teach many students in Alaska. While teaching art in Alaska, David has instructed students and artist in many programs including the Alaska Artists in the Schools Program, Prince William Sound Community College and University of Alaska Fairbanks Summer Sessions. Alaskan artist David Rosenthal makes it a priority to travel around Alaska as much as possible to continue to capture the incredible beauty in his artwork of Alaska.
Having spent over sixty months on the Ice, including four austral winters and six austral summers, David became an Antarctic artist and has created art images from a large variety of places in every season. David has completed paintings of the antarctic landscape from all across Antarctica. Time in Antarctica included travel as a participant in the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program during a summer and a winter at McMurdo Station as well as most of a winter at Palmer Station. David has also worked for the NSF contractor for two winters and four summers in various job capacities as a way to spend time and become familiar with the landscape.
Rosenthal's work also includes many water colors, oil paintings, sketches and small studies. The paintings seem to magically reflect the intensity of nature's colors and the atmospheric phenomena that David witnesses. The images in these galleries have been created during his travels from 1977 to the present 2016.  David really is a master of Extreme Art!
Source:
- David Rosenthal website

 

_______________________________
2016 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau  

MONTE DARWIN PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT  (1882 - 1971)

Monte Darwin (2,438 m - 7,999ft)

Tierra del fuego - Chile 

The mountain 

Monte Darwin (2,438 m - 7,999ft) is a peak in Tierra del Fuego (Magallanes and Chilean Antarctic area) forming part of the Cordillera Darwin, the southernmost range of the Andes, just to the north of the Beagle Channel. It is formed of crystalline schists and has massive glaciers down its steep southern slopes. Monte Darwin was for a long time considered as the highest peak in Tierra del Fuego, but that distinction corresponds to a mountain unofficially named Monte Shipton, which is about 2,580 m (8,460 ft) high and is located at 54°39′33″S 69°35′54″W.   Monte Shipton was first climbed in 1962 by Eric Shipton, E. Garcia, F. Vivanco and C. Marangunic. Monte Darwin was first climbed in  1970 by M. Andrews, N. Banks, M. Taylor, P. Radcliffe and P. James,  N. Bennett and R. Heffernan. Both peaks are best climbed in late December, January, February and March. 

Mount Darwin was given its name during the voyage of the Beagle by HMS Beagle's captain Robert FitzRoy to celebrate Charles Darwin's 25th birthday on 12 February 1834. A year earlier FitzRoy had named an expanse of water to the southwest of the mountain the Darwin Sound to commemorate Darwin's quick wit and courage in saving them from being marooned when waves from a mass of ice splitting off a glacier threatened their boats.

The mountain is part of Alberto de Agostini National Park.

Sources: 

- Victory Adventures expeditions

The painter

Rockwell Kent, artist, author, and political activist, had a long  and varied career. During his lifetime, he worked as an architectural draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, painter, lobsterman, ship's carpenter, and dairy farmer. Born in Tarrytown Heights, New York, he lived in Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and the Adirondacks and explored the waters around Tierra del Fuego in a small boat. Kent's paintings, lithographs, and woodcuts often portrayed the bleak and rugged aspects of nature; a reflection of his life in harsh climates.His experience as a carpenter and builder and his familiarity with tools served him well when he took up the graphic process. His blocks were marvels of beautiful cutting, every line deliberate and under perfect control. The tones and lines in his lithography were solidly built up, subtle, and full of color. He usually made preliminary studies- old-mater style- for composition or detail before starting on a print. Nothing was vague or accidental about his work; his expression was clear and deliberate. Neither misty tonalities nor suggestiveness were to his taste. He was a highly objectified art - clean, athletic, sometimes almost austere and cold. He either recorded adventures concretely, or dealt in ideas. His studio was a model of the efficient workshop: neat, orderly, with everything in its place. His handwriting, the fruit of his architectural training, was beautiful and precise.
When Kent died of a heart attack in 1971, The New York Times described him as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States."  Richer, more accurate accounts of the scope of the artist's influential career as a painter and writer have since superseded this cursory summing-up of an American life. Retrospectives of the artist's paintings and drawings have been mounted, most recently by The Rooms in St. John's, Newfoundland, where the exhibition Pointed North: Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland and Labrador was curated by Caroline Stone in the summer of 2014. Other recent exhibitions include the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) in the autumn of 2012; the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) during the spring through autumn of 2012; the Bennington Museum in Vermont during the summer of 2012; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring through summer of 2012. An exhibition marking the centennial of Kent's time in Winona, Minnesota, took place there in 2013. Among the many notes of increasing awareness of Kent's contributions to American culture is the reproduction of one of Kent's pen-and-ink drawings from Moby Dick on a U.S. postage stamp, part of the 2001 commemorative panel celebrating such American illustrators as Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington, and Norman Rockwell.
Noted American and Canadian writers in recent years have found much gold to mine in Kent's improbable personal and public life. The year he spent in Newfoundland, for example, is fictionally (and very loosely) recalled by Canadian writer Michael Winter in The Big Why, his 2004 Winterset Award-winning novel. And certain qualities of the protagonist of Russell Banks's 2008 novel The Reserve are inspired by aspects of Kent's complex personality. Kent's work also figures in Steve Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty and is the subject of a chapter in Douglas Brinkley's 2011 history The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom: 1879–1960.
The Archives of American Art is the repository for Kent's voluminous correspondence.

Source: 

- Short Biography byPlattsburgh State Art Museum 

JABAL QASIYUN BY FREDERIC GADMER

FREDERIC GADMER (1878-1954)

Jabal Qāsiyūn (1,151 m -3,776 ft)
Syria

Autochrome Lumière process, 1921, Albert Kahn Museum, Paris 

Mountain 

Jabal Qāsiyūn (1,151 m - 3,776 ft) or Mount Qasioun (Arabic: جبل قاسيون‎‎ ) is a mountain overlooking the city of Damascus, Syria, part of the Anti-Lebanon Range of mountains (Arabic: Al-jabal Ash-sharqī, or Lubnān Ash-sharqī, Anti Liban in french).  As the city has expanded over the years, some districts have been established on the foot of the mountain. 

The mountain has been heavily entrenched with Syrian government forces since the start of the Syrian Civil War. The mountain is also host to an endemic species of iris, Iris damascena, which can be found on the steep eastern slopes, at an altitude of 1,200 m (3,900 ft) above sea level. 

Jabal Qāsiyūn is known to be a sacred mountain, a place in which several stories written in the Bible as well as in Quran took place.  

On the slopes of Jabal Qasiun is a cave steeped in legend. It is said to have been inhabited at one point by the first human-being, Adam; and there are various stories told about Ibrāhīm (Abraham), and 'Īsā (Jesus) also having prayed in it. 

It is mentioned however in Medieval Arab history books as having been the place where Qābīl (Cain) killed Hābīl (Abel).  It was known for hundreds of years as a place where prayers were immediately accepted, and especially in times of drought rulers of Damascus would climb to the cave and pray for rain. Because of the murder that took place there, claimed to be the first committed, it is called Maghārat al-Dam (the Cave of Blood).  

According to Sunni Muslims, Mount Qasioun is the site of the miḥrābs (prayer niches) of the 40 arch-saints, known as the Abdāl, who are said to pray the night vigil prayers every night. A small mosque has been built over the Cave of Blood containing these miḥrābs.

Further down the mountain from the 'Cave of Blood', there was another cave known as Maghārat al-Jūˁ (the Cave of Hunger). Stories about this cave are somewhat confused. Al-Harawī, who lived in the 13th century, wrote that it is said that forty prophets died there of hunger. At present, the cave has been concealed by surrounding houses, but that spot is called al-Juyūˁīyah (the Place of the Hungry').

On another flank of the same mountain is yet another cave, which has come down in local legend as being the cave of the Seven Sleepers, mentioned in early Christian sources, as well as in the Quran, where they are known as the Aṣḥāb al-Kahf (Companions of the Cave). This is rather dubious, however, and it is only one of many caves in this part of the world that share the claim. 

A madrassah has been built over the cave, but pilgrims are still granted access.
Source: 
- Mount Qasioun Wikipedia page 

The photographer 

Frédéric Georges Gadmer was born in 1878 in France into a Protestant family;  his father, Leon, son of Swiss émigré, was confectioner, and his mother, Marie Georgine, was unemployed. Before World War II, he follows his family in Paris and works as a photographer for the house Vitry, located Quai de la Rapée. As an heliogravure company, it performs work for the sciences and the arts, travel and education. In 1898 Gadmer completed his military service as a secretary to the staff then recalled in 1914 at the time of mobilization. In 1915, he joined the newly created  "Photographic Section of the Army" and carried pictures on the front, in the Dardanelles, with General Gouraud, then in Cameroon. In 1919, at age 41, he was hired as a photographer byAlbert Khan for his project called "Archives of the Planet". He finds there his comrades of   "the film and photographic section of the army" Paul Castelnau and Fernand Cuville. Soon as he arrived, he made reports in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Palestine. It was the first to make a color portrait of Mustafa Kemal, leader of the Young Turks. In 1921, he returned to the Levant with Jean Brunhes, the scientific director of the Archives of the Planet. The same year, he attended General Gouraud, appointed High Commissioner in Syria. Operator and prolific photographer, specializing in distant lands and landscapes, it covers Iraq, Persia, Afghanistan, Algeria and Tunisia. In 1930, he accompanied Father Francis Aupiais in Dahomey. He also works in Europe. In 1931, at the request of Marechal Lyautey, he photographies the Colonial Exhibition. It is one of the last person to leave the  "Archives of the Planet" threatened by the Albert Kahn's bankruptcy in 1932. He then worked at the famous french newspaper L'Illustration and carries postcards for Yvon. He died in Paris, unmarried, in 1954 and is buried in Saint-Quentin, as his parents.

Source: 

- Frédéric Gadmer in the Médiathèque Albert Kahn

About the  "Autochrome Lumière" Photos

The autochrome is a photographic reproduction of process colors patented December 17, 1903 by Auguste and Louis Lumière french brothers. This is the first industrial technique of photography colors, it produces positive images on glass plates. It was used between 1907 and 1932 approximately an particularly in many pictures of the World War I. A important number of photographs of mountains and landscapes around the world was made with this technique, particularly in the for  the Project "The archives of the planet" by Albert Kahn. 

MOUNT VESUVIUS BY ALEXANDRE-HYACINTHE DUNOUY

ALEXANDRE-HYACINTHE DUNOUY (1757-1841) 
 Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

In  L'éruption du Vésuve en 1813, Château de Fontainebleau, France

The mountain 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The  painter 

Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy (1757–1841) was a French painter known for his landscapes.

A native of Paris, Dunouy began his career depicting views of the city and the surrounding region, exhibiting a views of the area around Rome and Naples he painted in the 1780's

at the Paris Salon in 1791. He went back Italy in 1810 under the patronage of Joachim Murat, made king of Naples by Napoleon 1st,  whose he married the sister Caroline. Dunouy became the official painter of the King of Naples and of his wife Caroline Bonaparte. At this time, he painted  studies for the decorations of the Royal Palace of Portici. Therefore, Dunouy frequently receives  orders from the french Imperial family, as views of the castle of Mortefontaine for Joseph Bonaparte, an other of the Emperor's brother.

in 1815, after the exil of Napoleon and the fall of the First French Empire, Dunouy left Italy but does not cease its activity.  HE continue to paint for the next regime and  received from king Louis XVIII, for a view of  Eruption of Mount Vesuvius (the one reproduced above). This painting entrusts the kink to ask Dunouy to realize decorations projects for the Trianon, Compiègne Castle and St. Cloud castle.  His paintings, of small dimensions, are primarily decorative. It is usually presented as classical compositions abounding details. His work follows in the footsteps of Jean-Victor Bertin and Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidault. Some of his works include elements painted by Jean-Louis Demarne and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay. He continued to exhibit regularly until 1833 and became the master of Achille-Etna Michallon.  He received  medals  in 1819 and 1827. He is also associated with the Auvergne, Savoy, and the area around Lyon. 

Source: 
- Dunouy in BnF catalogue général 

2 others paintings of Vesuvius on this blog: 

- Antique roman first known picture 

- Vesuvius series by Andy Warhol

ATITLAN & TOLIMAN VOLCANOS BY ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)

  Atitlбn (3,535 m -11,598ft) & Tolimбn  (3,158 m -10,361ft) 

Guatemala 

In Atitlan and Tolimon seen from Lake Atitlan, 1937, watercolor, 

The mountains

Atitlбn volcano  (3,535 m - 11,598 ft)  is a large, conical, active stratovolcano adjacent to the caldera of Lake Atitlбn in the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas range. It is within the Sololб Department, northern Guatemala. The volcano has been quite active historically, with more than a dozen eruptions recorded between 1469 and 1853, the date of its most recent eruption. Atitlбn is part of the Central American Volcanic Arc. The arc is a chain of volcanoes stretching along Central America formed by subduction of the Cocos Plate underneath the Caribbean Plate. This volcano is part of the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean. Atitlбn is home to two particularly rare and beautiful birds that are endemic to the cloud forests of this region. The horned guan (Oreophasis derbianus) is a Pleistocene relic of the Cracidae family that persists today only in small fragments of its previous range. Its habitat is limited to cloud forests above approximately 1,650 metres (5,410 ft). This bird is the size of a turkey and the adult male has a one-inch scarlet-colored "horn" projecting straight up from the top of its head. The Cabanis's or azure-rumped tanager (Tangara cabanisi) is probably the most restricted-range species in the region. It occurs only at mid-elevations within the Sierra Madre del Sur of Chiapas, Mexico and western Guatemala. Atitlбn lies on the southern rim of the caldera, while Volcano San Pedro and Volcano Tolimбn lie within the caldera. San Pedro is the oldest of the three and seems to have stopped erupting about 40,000 years ago. Tolimбn began growing after San Pedro stopped erupting, and probably remains active, although it has not erupted in historic times. Atitlбn has developed almost entirely in the last 10,000 years and remains active, with its most recent eruption having occurred in 1853.




Tolimбn volcano  (3,158 m -10,361 ft) is located on the southern shores of Lago de Atitlбn. The volcano  was formed near the southern margin of the Pleistocene Atitlбn III caldera. The top of the volcano has a shallow crater and its flanks are covered with the thick remains of ancient lava flows that emerged from vents in the volcano's flanks. A parasitic lava dome, known as Cerro de Oro, was formed on the volcano's northern flank, which may have erupted a few thousand years ago.




San Pedro volcano  (3,020m -9,908 ft) (also named Las Yeguas) represented in the foggy background of in the Coleman painting, is the third stratovolcano on the shores of Lago de Atitlбn, in the Solol Department of northern Guatemala. At its base is the village of San Pedro La Laguna.




The first volcanic activity in the region occurred about 11 million years ago, and since then the region has seen four separate episodes of volcanic growth and caldera collapse, the most recent of which began about 1.8 million years ago and culminated in the formation of the present caldera. The lake now fills a large part of the caldera, reaching depths of up to 600 metres.

The caldera-forming eruption is known as Los Chocoyos eruption and ejected up to 300 km3 (72 cu mi) of tephra. The enormous eruption dispersed ash over an area of some 6 million kmІ: it has been detected from Florida to Ecuador, and can be used as a stratigraphic marker in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans (known as Y-8 ash in marine deposits). A chocoyo is a type of bird which is often found nesting in the relatively soft ash layer.

On February 4, 1976, a massive earthquake (magnitude 7.5) struck Guatemala, killing more than 26,000 people. The earthquake fractured the lake bed and caused subsurface drainage from the lake, allowing the water level to drop two meters within one month

The artist 

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. 

From 1901 to 1922, he was a Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1919 to 1922. From 1931 to 1934, he was a geologist with the Department of Mines of the Government of Ontario. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1900 and was its President in 1921. In 1929, he was appointed Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

 "Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park is named in his honor.  He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.

He planned to climb "hi" mountain, "Mount Coleman"'in the Albertan Rockies, and had also prepared a trip to British Guiana, but death intervened.

He was author of:

- Reports on the Economic Geology of Ontario (1903)

- Lake Ojibway; Last of the Great Glacial Lakes (1909) 

- The Canadian Rockies: New and Old Trails (1911)

- Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient (1926), and was co-author of Elementary Geology (1922).

- The Last Million Years (1941) edited by George F. Kay

THE '"DENTS DU MIDI" PAINTED BY GUSTAVE COURBET

GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877)

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

Switzerland 

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

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

The painter 

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

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

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

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

The mountain 

See  The Dents du midi already posted in this blog

MOUNT ATHABASCA PAINTED BY ARTHUR P. COLEMAN

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)

Mount Athabasca  (3,491m - 11,453ft)

Canada

1. In Athabasca near Wicox pass, 1807, watercolour, Private coll.

2.  In Athabasca near Wilcox Pass between Saskatchewan & Athabasca,watercolour, Private coll.  

3.  In  Up the Athabasca from Junction of Sunwapta, 1893, drawing, Private coll. 

The mountain 

Mount Athabasca (3,491m - 11,453ft) or Athabaska, is located in the Columbia Icefield of  Jasper National Park  in Canada. Athabasca is the Cree Indian name for "where there are reeds" which originally referred to Lake Athabasca.The first known Europeans to discover this peak in 1896 were Walter Wilcox, Robert Barrett and their two guides. They made an attempt to climb the peak but were unsuccessful.The mountain was named in 1898 by J. Norman Collie and ,Herman Woolley who made the first ascent on August 18 of that year. This climb of the mountain was the result of nineteen days of travel and searching on horseback and on foot, beginning in Lake Louise. It is a lot easier today.

After Mount Robson and Mount Temple, Mt. Athabasca may be the most well-known peak in the Canadian Rockies. It was my first Canadian alpine ascent and the same goes for many. The surrounding area include, Mt Andreomeda, Snow Dome, Mt. Kitchener, Mt Wilcox and Nigel Peak.

Definitely a main climbing and tourist attraction in the area.


Climbing 

There are several climbing routes, including:  North Glacier (Normal Route), Silverhorn, AA Col II, Regular North Face III 5.8, North Ridge III 5.5, The Hourglass 300m, III, AI3-4. One of the most prominent features of Mount Athabasca is a horned-shaped tip near the top called the "Silverhorn". The Silverhorn is one of the easier routes to the summit but requires more caution and ability than the normal route because of Blue ice and falling ice from other parties. Although not apparent from the typical roadside view of the mountain, the south side of Silverhorn actually contains a scrambling route but one must still cross the north glacier to get to it. From the top of the Silverhorn, the summit is a rather easy 15-minute plod in good summer weather over the narrow snow-covered summit ridge.

Sources: 

- Mount Athabaska page in summit post.org 

- The Alpine Club of Canada 

- Parks Canada

The artist 

Arthur Philemon Coleman Biography in this blog