PUY DE LA VACHE PAINTED BY CAMILLE COROT

CAMILLE COROT (1796-1875)

Puy de la Vache  (1,167m- 3,829ft) 

France (Puy de dôme)

In Monts d'Auvergne, oil on canvas,  Musée d'art Roger Quilliot, Clermont-Ferrand  

The mountain 

The Puy de la Vache (1,167m- 3,829ft)  (Puy of the Cow) is a basaltic volcano of the Puys Range, in the Massif Central in France. The Puy de la Vache is located in the town of Saint-Genès-Champanelle, south-west of Clermont-Ferrand. Its principal lava flow, combined with that of the Puy de Lassolas, is called Cheire d'Aydat. It created, by barring valleys, different lakes including Lake Cassière to the North and Lake Aydat to the South in the valley of the Veyre.

With its twin the Puy de Lassolas, they form two monogenic volcanoes, that is to say, born of a single eruptive episode, of strombolian type. They form two cones of slag, the color of which goes from red (for those exposed to the heat of the crater, which has favored their oxidation) to black.

Their joint lava flow (Cheire d'Aydat) traveled fifteen kilometers to the Southeast, reaching the current sites of the towns of Saint-Saturnin and Saint-Amant-Tallende. The slag dropped on the back of the casting made the surface chaotic. It is possible to find on this site rare phenocrysts (large crystals contained in a volcanic rock). Aged 8,600, they are the youngest volcanoes in the Puys range. The last listed eruption was in 6020 before the Christian era. 

The painter 

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching,  is a pivotal figure in landscape painting.  His vast output simultaneously refers the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.

Camille Corot, no doubt attracted by the mythical aspect of Monte Soratte, painted it several times during his first stay in Italy between 1825 and 1830.  Three of these representations are published in this blog today; although all painted  between 1826 and 1827, they are very different from each other, they were painted at different times of the year ant different hours of the day as he used to do.  The first presented here, apparently painted during summertime, has an almost Cézanian appearance !

Indeed, with his parents' support, Corot followed the well-established pattern of French painters who went to Italy to study the masters of the Italian Renaissance and to draw the crumbling monuments of Roman antiquity.  A condition by his parents before leaving was that he paint a self-portrait for them, his first.  During  his stay in Italy, Corot completed over 200 drawings and 150 paintings !   

Corot learned little from the Renaissance masters (though later he cited Leonardo da Vinci as his favorite painter) and spent most of his time around Rome and in the Italian countryside.  The Farnese Gardens with its splendid views of the ancient ruins was a frequent destination, and he painted it at three different times of the day, like Monte Soratte.  The training was particularly valuable in gaining an understanding of the challenges of both the mid-range and panoramic perspective, and in effectively placing man-made structures in a natural setting.   He also learned how to give buildings and rocks the effect of volume and solidity with proper light and shadow, while using a smooth and thin technique.   

Of him Claude Monet exclaimed in 1897, "There is only one master here—Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing."  His contributions to figure painting are hardly less important; Degas preferred his figures to his landscapes, and the classical figures of Picasso pay overt homage to Corot's influence.

Historians have divided his work into periods, but the points of division are often vague, as he often completed a picture years after he began it. In his early period, he painted traditionally and "tight"—with minute exactness, clear outlines, thin brush work, and with absolute definition of objects throughout, with a monochromatic underpainting or ébauche.  After he reached his 50th year, his methods changed to focus on breadth of tone and an approach to poetic power conveyed with thicker application of paint; and about 20 years later, from about 1865 onwards, his manner of painting became more lyrical, affected with a more impressionistic touch. In part, this evolution in expression can be seen as marking the transition from the plein-air paintings of his youth, shot through with warm natural light, to the studio-created landscapes of his late maturity, enveloped in uniform tones of silver. In his final 10 years he became the "Père (Father) Corot" of Parisian artistic circles, where he was regarded with personal affection, and acknowledged as one of the five or six greatest landscape painters the world had seen, along with Hobbema, Claude Lorrain, Turner and Constable. In his long and productive life, he painted over 3,000 paintings.

Though often credited as a precursor of Impressionist practice, Corot approached his landscapes more traditionally than is usually believed.  Compared to the Impressionists who came later, Corot's palette is restrained, dominated with browns and blacks ("forbidden colors" among the Impressionists) along with dark and silvery green.  Though appearing at times to be rapid and spontaneous, usually his strokes were controlled and careful, and his compositions well-thought out and generally rendered as simply and concisely as possible, heightening the poetic effect of the imagery.  As he stated, "I noticed that everything that was done correctly on the first attempt was more true, and the forms more beautiful."

Corot's approach to his subjects was similarly traditional.  Although he was a major proponent of plein-air studies, he was essentially a studio painter and few of his finished landscapes were completed before the motif.  For most of his life, Corot would spend his summers travelling and collecting studies and sketches, and his winters finishing more polished, market-ready works.  For example, the title of his Bathers of the Borromean Isles (1865–70) refers to Lake Maggiore in Italy, despite the fact that Corot had not been to Italy in 20 years.  His emphasis on drawing images from the imagination and memory rather than direct observation was in line with the tastes of the Salon jurors, of which he was a member.

In the 1860s, Corot became interested in photography, taking photos himself and becoming acquainted with many early photographers, which had the effect of suppressing his painting palette even more in sympathy with the monochromic tones of photographs. This had the result of making his paintings even less dramatic but somewhat more poetic, a result which caused some critics to cite a monotony in his later work. Théophile Thoré wrote that Corot "has only a single octave, extremely limited and in a minor key; a musician would say. He knows scarcely more than a single time of day, the morning, and a single color, pale grey."  Corot responded: "What there is to see in painting, or rather what I am looking for, is the form, the whole, the value of the tones...That is why for me the color comes after, because I love more than anything else the overall effect, the harmony of the tones, while color gives you a kind of shock that I don’t like. Perhaps it is the excess of this principal that makes people say I have leaden tones."

In his aversion to shocking color, Corot sharply diverged from the up-and-coming Impressionists, who embraced experimentation with vivid hues.

The works of Corot are housed in museums in France and the Netherlands, Britain, North America and Russia.

FUJIYAMA / 富士山 (n°33 d) BY HOKUSAÏ

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAÏ (1760-1849) 

Fujiyama / 富士山(3,776.24 m -12,389 ft)
Japan

 South Wind Clear dawn, early print, n °33 from the series 36 Views of Mt. Fuji,1830-32,
Edo Tokyo Museum, Japan

About the 36 Views of Mt Fuji 
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei) is a series of landscape prints　created by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai (1760?1849). The series depicts Mount Fuji from different locations and in various seasons and weather conditions. The original thirty-six prints were so popular that Hokusai expanded the series by ten. 

The earliest impressions appear faded when compared to the versions usually seen, but are closer to Hokusai's original conception. The original prints have a deliberately uneven blue sky, which increases the sky's brightness and gives movement to the clouds. The peak is brought forward with a halo of Prussian blue. Subsequent prints have a strong, even blue tone and the printer added a new block, overprinting the white clouds on the horizon with light blue. Later prints also typically employ a strong benigara (Bengal red) pigment, which lent the painting its common name of Red Fuji. The green block colour was recut, lowering the meeting point between forest and mountain slope.

The artist
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎)  was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 c. 1831) which includes the internationally recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s.
Hokusai created the "Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji " both as a response to a domestic travel boom and as part of a personal obsession with Mount Fuji. In this series, Mt Fuji is painted on different meteorological conditions, in different hours of the days, in different seasons and from different places.

The mountain 
This is the legendary Mount Fuji or Fujiyama (富士山).
It is located on Honshu Island and is the highest mountain peak in Japan at 3,776.24 m (12,389 ft). Several names are attributed to it:  "Fuji-san", "Fujiyama" or, redundantly, "Mt. Fujiyama". Usually Japanese speakers refer to the mountain as "Fuji-san".  The other Japanese names for Mount Fuji,  have become obsolete or poetic like: Fuji-no-Yama (ふじの山 - The Mountain of Fuji), Fuji-no-Takane (ふじの高嶺- The High Peak of Fuji), Fuyō-hō (芙蓉峰 - The Lotus Peak), and Fugaku (富岳／富嶽), created by combining the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain.
Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1707–08. Mount Fuji lies about 100 kilometres (60 mi) south-west of Tokyo, and can be seen from there on a clear day.
Mount Fuji's exceptionally symmetrical cone, which is snow-capped several months a year, is a well-known symbol of Japan and it is frequently depicted in art and photographs, as well as visited by sightseers and climbers.
Mount Fuji is one of Japan's Three Holy Mountains (三霊山) along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku. It is also a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and one of Japan's Historic Sites.
It was added to the World Heritage List as a Cultural Site on June 22, 2013. As per UNESCO, Mount Fuji has “inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries”. UNESCO recognizes 25 sites of cultural interest within the Mt. Fuji locality. These 25 locations include the mountain itself, Fujisan Hongū Sengen Shrine and six other Sengen shrines, two lodging houses, Lake Yamanaka, Lake Kawaguchi, the eight Oshino Hakkai hot springs, two lava tree molds, the remains of the Fuji-kō cult in the Hitoana cave, Shiraito Falls, and Miho no Matsubara pine tree grove;  while on the low alps of Mount Fuji lies the Taisekiji temple complex, where the central base headquarters of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism is located.

MOUNT SIDLEY BY NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY

NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY (since 1999)

Mount Sidley  (4,285m - 14,058ft)

Antarctica

1.  In Mount Sidley seen from space, photo by Landsat 8, NASA Earth Observatory 

2.  In Mont Sidley caldera - aerial view, vintage photo 

The mountain 
Mount Sidley  (4,181–4,285 m - 13,717–14,058 ft) is the highest dormant volcano in Antarctica, a member of the Volcanic Seven Summits, standing about 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) above ice level. It is a massive, mainly snow-covered shield volcano which is the highest and most imposing of the five volcanic mountains that comprise the Executive Committee Range of Marie Byrd Land. The feature is marked by a spectacular 5 km (3 miles) wide caldera on the southern side and stands NE of Mount Waesche in the southern part of the range. The mountain was discovered by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd on an airplane flight, November 18, 1934, and named by him for Mabelle E. Sidley, the daughter of William Horlick who was a contributor to the 1933–35 Byrd Antarctic Expedition. Despite its lofty status, the volcano languishes in obscurity due to its extremely remote location. It is little known even in the mountaineering world compared to the far more famous Mount Erebus, the second highest Antarctic volcano which is located near the U.S. and New Zealand bases on Ross Island. The first recorded ascent of Mount Sidley was by New Zealander Bill Atkinson on January 11, 1990, whilst working in support of a USAP scientific field party.

Imager
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.  This image of Mount Sidley was acquired on November 20, 2014, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.  The image is the public domain. The caldera wall, which is mostly shadowed in this image, is about 1,200 meters (3,900 feet) high. Sidley is one of five volcanoes in the Executive Committee Range, which stretches about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from north to south.
Source 
- NASA Earth Observatory

PIZ CORVATSCH PAINTED BY GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI

GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI (1868-1933)

Piz Corvatsch (3,451m - 11, 322 ft) 

Switzerland

In Piz Corvatsch, watercolor

The mountain

Piz Corvatsch  (3,451m- 11, 322 ft) is a mountain in the Bernina Range of the Alps, overlooking Lake Sils and Lake Silvaplana in the Engadin region of the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. It is the highest point on the range separating the main Inn valley from the Val Roseg. Aside from Piz Corvatsch, two other slightly lower summits make up the Corvatsch massif: Piz Murtèl (3,433 m (11,263 ft); north of Piz Corvatsch) and the unnamed summit where lies the Corvatsch upper cable car station (3,303 m (10,837 ft); north of Piz Murtèl). Politically, the summit of Piz Corvatsch is shared between the municipalities of Sils im Engadin and Samedan, although the 3,303 m high summit lies between the municipalities of Silvaplana and Samedan. The tripoint between the aforementioned municipalities is the summit of Piz Murtèl.

Several glaciers lie on the east side on the massif. The largest, below Piz Corvatsch, is named Vadret dal Murtèl. The second largest, below Piz Murtèl and the station, is named Vadret dal Corvatsch.

The Corvatsch cable car starts above the village of Surlej, east of Silvaplana and culminates at 3,298 m. From there, the summit of Piz Corvatsch can be reached by traversing Piz Murtиl. In winter and spring, the mountain is part of a ski area, which is amongst the highest in Switzerland and the Eastern Alps.

The painter 

Giovanni Giacometti was a Swiss painter, the father of  the famous painter and sculptor Alberto  Giacommetti, and of Diego Giacometti, the furniture designer as well as the father of the architect Bruno Giacometti !

In 1886, he studied painting at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich, where he met Cuno Amiet the following year. Both decide to pursue their studies in Paris, in October stood at the Académie Julian, where Giacometti remains until 1891.

In 1893, shortly after his return to Switzerland, to Bergell, he became friends with Giovanni Segantini, his eldest ten years, which has great influence on his work by opening it to the beauty of the mountain scenery and the rules of divisionism. After his sudden death in 1899, Giacometti met Ferdinand Hodler, who teaches him to create a rigorous and ornamental composition by appropriate use of shapes and colors.

He sees regularly Cuno Amiet, who after a year spent in Pont-Aven,  shared his experience with him. In 1900 he exhibited in the Swiss Pavillon of the Universal Exhibition in Paris. From 1905, Giacometti works again in a great complicity with Amiet and begins to break free from the influence of Segantini. In 1906, held an exhibition of his work at Kunstlerhaus Zurich. In 1907 he went to Paris with Amiet to the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. They copy all the works of Van Gogh. In 1908, he exhibited with the French Fauves at the Richter Gallery in Dresden.

In 1909, the Tannhauser Gallery presents his works in Munich. He meets Alexi von Jawlensky, and in 1911 participates in the Berlin Secession. In 1912, Giacometti has a solo show at the Kunsthaus Zurich presents two works in the Sonderbund of Cologne. In 1918 after Hodler' s death, he began to be involved into the Swiss political world  paying an important part as a committed artist, following intthat way friend Amiet.

______________________________
2017 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
 

COMPTON PEAK BY NASA LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER

NASA LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER (August 6 -18, 1967 - August 27, 1967) 

Compton Peak (0 - No elevation data)

Northern Hemisphere - Far side

The Moon    

1. In The Earth (Africa, Europe, Atlantic Ocean) seen from Compton Peak, Photo, August 1967 

2. In Compton Crater and its central peak, Photo, August 1967

3. In Compton crater and peak seen from Apollo 16 NASA mission, Photo, April 1972

The  crater and it peak  
Compton is a prominent lunar crater with a central peak (heigh unknown)  that is located in the northern hemisphere on the far side of the Moon. It lies to the east of the Mare Humboldtianum, and southwest of the walled plain Schwarzschild. To the southeast of Compton is the heavily eroded crater Swann. This formation is roughly circular, with a wide, irregular outer rim that varies considerably in width. Parts of the inner wall have terraced steps that form wide shelves along the edge. Within the wall is a floor that has been resurfaced by lava flows some time in the past. This surface has a lower albedo than the surroundings, giving it a slightly darker hue.
At the midpoint of the floor is a formation of mounts that comprise the central peak. This peak is surrounded by a semi-circular ring of hills that lie in the western half of the crater at a radius about half that of the inner edge of the rim. These mounts form jagged rises through the lava-covered surface and lie at irregular intervals from each other.
The interior also contains a set of slender rilles within the ring of hills, primarily in the northwest part of the crater floor. Apart from a small, bowl-shaped craterlet near the eastern rim, the floor only contains a few tiny craterlets.
Source:
NASA, Lunar Nomenclature

The Imager
 Lunar Orbiter 5, the last of the Lunar Orbiter series, was designed to take additional Apollo and Surveyor landing site photography and to take broad survey images of unphotographed parts of the Moon's far side. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data and was used to evaluate the Manned Space Flight Network tracking stations and Apollo Orbit Determination Program. The spacecraft was placed in a cislunar trajectory and on August 5, 1967 was injected into an elliptical near polar lunar orbit 194.5 by 6,023 kilometres (120.9 mi × 3,742.5 mi) with an inclination of 85 degrees and a period of 8 hours 30 minutes. On August 7 the perilune was lowered to 100 kilometers (62 mi), and on August 9 the orbit was lowered to a 99-by-1,499-kilometre (62 mi × 931 mi), 3 hour 11 minute period.
The spacecraft acquired photographic data from August 6 to 18, 1967, and readout occurred until August 27, 1967. A total of 633 high resolution and 211 medium resolution frames at resolution down to 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) were acquired, bringing the cumulative photographic coverage by the five Lunar Orbiter craft to 99% of the Moon's surface. Accurate data were acquired from all other experiments throughout the mission. The spacecraft was tracked until it struck the lunar surface on command at 2.79 degrees S latitude, 83 degrees W longitude (selenographic coordinates) on January 31, 1968.

SCHNEEKOPPE (1) PAINTED BY CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840)

Schneekoppe or Sněћka or Śnieżka (1,603m - 2,259ft) 

Poland - Czech Republic border 

 In The Risengbirge, 1810, oil on canvas, Private collection  

The mountain 

Schneekoppe (1,603m  - 2,259ft) in German or Sněћka in Czech or Śnieżka in Polish, is a mountain on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland, the most prominent point of the Silesian Ridge in the Krkonoše mountains. Its summit is the highest point in the Czech Republic, in the Krkonoše and in the entire Sudetes range system.

The first historical account of an ascent to the peak is in 1456, by an unknown Venetian merchant searching for precious stones. The first settlements on the mountain soon appeared, being primarily mining communities, tapping into its deposits of copper, iron and arsenic. The mining shafts, totalling 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) in length, remain to this day.

The first recorded German name was Riseberg ("giant mountain", cf. Riesengebirge, "Giant Mountains"), mentioned by Georg Agricola in 1546. Fifteen years later the name Riesenberg appears on Martin Helwig's map of Silesia. The German name later changed to Riesenkoppe ("giant top") and finally to Schneekoppe ("snow top", "snowy head").

In Czech, the mountain was initially called Pahrbek Sněžný. Later Sněžka, with the eventual name Sněžovka, meaning "snowy" or "snow-covered", which was adopted in 1823. 

An older Polish name for the mountain was Góra Olbrzymia, meaning "giant mountain".

The first building on the mountaintop was the Chapel of Saint Lawrence (Laurentiuskapelle), built ca. 1665–1681 by the Silesian Schaffgotsch family to mark their dominion, serving also as an inn for a brief period of time. The territory including the mines were the property of the Schaffgotsch family until 1945. The so-called Prussian hut was built on the Silesian (now Polish) side in 1850, followed by the Bohemian hut on the Bohemian (now Czech) side in 1868, both built with the purpose of providing lodging. The Prussian hut was rebuilt twice after fires (1857 and 1862), and the (after 1945) "Polish hut" was finally demolished in 1967. The Bohemian hut fell into disrepair after 1990 and was demolished in 2004.

A wooden weather station was built on the mountaintop ca. 1900, being the only weather station in Central Europe remaining intact after World War II. It was demolished in the 1980s.

One side of the mountain is in the Czech Republic; the other belongs to Poland. The area is very popular in summer with tourists from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany who enjoy hiking in the alpine environment one of a kind to this location.

On the Polish side a disc-shaped observatory and restaurant was built in 1974, a weather station and the St. Lawrence Chapel. On the Czech side are the remains of the Bohemian hut, a post office, and a chairlift station, connecting the peak with the town of Pec pod Sněžkou at the base of the mountain.

Although the mountain is the highest natural peak of Czech Republic, the actual highest point is the top of the television transmitter on Praděd, reaching 1,652 metres (1,491+162 m). If the Polish observatory is taken into account, Sněžka peaks at 1,620 metres.

In 2004 a new post office and observation platform replaced an old post office and the remains of the Bohemian hut, which was closed since the 1980s.

In March 2009 the Polish observatory suffered serious damage to the upper disc as a result of extreme weather and structural failure. The upper disc's floor broke. Fast response from Technical University of Wrocław saved the remaining disc from taking any further damage. The restaurant and meteo offices were reopened soon after the construction team had finished clearing the debris and securing what was left of the observatory. After detailed expertise it was decided that no further damage should occur and the building was restored to its previous state. Actually, the upper disc was restored to its 1974 design (with contemporary improvements), skipping certain "improvements" made in 1980s and 1990s which were suspected to contribute to the structural failure of March 2009.

Old chairlift to the top of Sněžka was replaced by a new cable car system. Since February 2014, the four-person cabins in two sections export 250 visitors per hour from the Czech city Pec pod Sněžkou.

The painter 
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, considered as the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in Pomerania, where he began to study art. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. A disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise everywhere in Europe. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".
Friedrich's work brought him renown early in his career, and contemporaries such as the French sculptor David d'Angers (1788–1856) spoke of him as a man who had discovered "the tragedy of landscape". Nevertheless, his work fell from favour during his later years, and he died in obscurity, and in the words of the art historian Philip B. Miller, "half mad". As Germany moved towards modernisation in the late 19th century, a new sense of urgency characterized its art, and Friedrich's contemplative depictions of stillness came to be seen as the products of a bygone age. The early 20th century brought a renewed appreciation of his work, beginning in 1906 with an exhibition of thirty-two of his paintings and sculptures in Berlin. By the 1920s his paintings had been discovered by the Expressionists, and in the 1930s and early 1940s Surrealists and Existentialists frequently drew ideas from his work. The rise of Nazism in the early 1930s again saw a resurgence in Friedrich's popularity, but this was followed by a sharp decline as his paintings were, by association with the Nazi movement, interpreted as having a nationalistic aspect.  It was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance.
Friedrich was a prolific artist who produced more than 500 attributed works. In line with the Romantic ideals of his time, he intended his paintings to function as pure aesthetic statements, so he was cautious that the titles given to his work were not overly descriptive or evocative. It is likely that some of today's more literal titles, such as The Stages of Life, were not given by the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one of the revivals of interest in Friedrich. Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part because he often did not directly name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully detailed notebook on his output, however, which has been used by scholars to tie paintings to their completion dates.

MOUNT OF OLIVES BY CAMILLE SAUVAGEOT

CAMILLE SAUVAGEOT  (1889-1931)

Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet  (826m - 2, 716ft)

East Jerusalem 

In Vue du Mont des Oliviers depuis le Mont Scopus, Jérusalem, 1925 -Autochrome Lumière.
Musée départemental Albert Kahn 

The photographer

Camille Sauvageot, like other operators of the "Archives of the Planet" by Albert Kahn, is coming from the Cinematographic and photographic section of the French Army created during the First World War. He entered to the service of Albert Kahn in 1919 essentially to cinematograph landscapes but he only brought back autochrome plates from Palestine, taken in April 1925, and from the Vosges in June 1927.  In 1928-1929  he was the only one to test the cinematographic process of restitution of colors called "Keller-Dorian" of the name of  one of its inventors, which associates a film comprising a lenticular array with a trichromatic lens for taking pictures and for projecting. Forty-five minutes of color film, now restored, concretize the dream of Albert Kahn to associate color and movement to restore the reality of the world. After the end of the "Archives of the Planet" and the Second World War, Camille Sauvageot took part n Thomson Company's researches on color cinematography and was the operator in 1947 of the color version the film « Jour de fête » by Jacques Tati  realized  with the Thomson Color Embossed Film System.

Source:
- Musée Départemental Albert Kahn

The mount 

The Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet (826m - 2, 716ft) -  in Hebrew: הַר הַזֵּיתִים‎, Har ha-Zeitim ; in Arabic: جبل الزيتون, الطور‎‎, Jabal al-Zaytun, Al-Tur - is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City. It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes.
The Mount of Olives is one of three peaks of a mountain ridge which runs for 3.5 kilometres (2.2 miles) just east of the Old City across the Kidron Valley, in this area called the Valley of Josaphat. The peak to its north is Mount Scopus, at 826 metres (2,710 feet), while the peak to its south is the Mount of Corruption, at 747 m (2,451 ft). The highest point on the Mount of Olives is At-Tur, at 818 m (2,684 ft). The ridge acts as a watershed, and its eastern side is the beginning of the Judean Desert.
The ridge is formed of oceanic sedimentary rock from the Late Cretaceous, and contains a soft chalk and a hard flint. While the chalk is easily quarried, it is not a suitable strength for construction, which is why the Mount was never built up and instead features many man-made burial caves. From Biblical times until the present, Jews have been buried on the Mount of Olives. The necropolis on the southern ridge, the location of the modern village of Silwan, was the burial place of Jerusalem's most important citizens in the period of the Biblical kings. The Mount has been used as a Jewish cemetery for over 3,000 years and holds approximately 150,000 graves, making it central in the tradition of Jewish cemeteries. The religious ceremony marking the start of a new month was held on the Mount of Olives in the days of the Second Temple. Roman soldiers from the 10th Legion camped on the Mount during the Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews celebrated the festival of Sukkot on the Mount of Olives. They made pilgrimages to the Mount of Olives because it was 80 meters higher than the Temple Mount and offered a panoramic view of the Temple site. It became a traditional place for lamenting the Temple's destruction, especially on Tisha B'Av. Several key events in the life of Jesus, as related in the Gospels, took place on the Mount of Olives, and in the Acts of the Apostles it is described as the place from which Jesus ascended to heaven. Because of its association with both Jesus and Mary, the Mount has been a site of Christian worship since ancient times and is today a major site of pilgrimage for Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants. In 1481, an Italian Jewish pilgrim, Rabbi Meshullam da Volterra, wrote: "And all the community of Jews, every year, goes up to Mount Zion on the day of Tisha B'Av to fast and mourn, and from there they move down along Yoshafat Valley and up to Mount of Olives. From there they see the whole Temple (the Temple Mount) and there they weep and lament the destruction of this House." In the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid £100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of graves on the mount. Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin asked to be buried on the Mount of Olives near the grave of Etzel member Meir Feinstein, rather than Mount Herzl national cemetery.
 Much of the top of the hill is occupied by At-Tur, a former village and now a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem with a majority-Muslim population.

JUNGFRAU PAINTED BY CHARLES WARREN EATON

CHARLES WARREN EATON (1857-1937) 

Jungfrau (4,158m- 13, 642ft)

Switzerland

In Jungfrau in 1890, Oil on canvas, The Cooley Gallery, Connecticut

The mountain 

The Jungfrau (4,158 m-13,642 ft) ("The virgin" in german)  is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with the Eiger and Mönch, the Jungfrau forms a massive wall overlooking the Bernese Oberland and the Swiss Plateau, one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps. It is one of the most represented by artists summits with the Matterhorn and the Mont Blanc.

The summit was first reached on August 3, 1811 by the Meyer brothers of Aarau and two chamois hunters from Valais. The ascent followed a long expedition over the glaciers and high passes of the Bernese Alps. It was not until 1865 that a more direct route on the northern side was opened.

The construction of the Jungfrau railway in the early 20th century, which connects Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch, the saddle between the Mönch and the Jungfrau, made the area one of the most-visited places in the Alps. Along with the Aletsch Glacier to the south, the Jungfrau is part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2001.

Politically, the Jungfrau is split between the municipalities of Lauterbrunnen (Bern) and Fieschertal (Valais). It is the third-highest mountain of the Bernese Alps after the nearby Finsteraarhorn and Aletschhorn, respectively 12 and 8 km away. But from Lake Thun, and the greater part of the canton of Bern, it is the most conspicuous and the nearest of the Bernese Oberland peaks; with a height difference of 3,600 m between the summit and the town of Interlaken. This, and the extreme steepness of the north face, secured for it an early reputation for inaccessibility.

The landscapes around the Jungfrau are extremely contrasted. Instead of the vertiginous precipices of the north-west, the south-east side emerges from the upper snows of the Aletsch Glacier at around 3,500 metres. The 20 km long valley of Aletsch on the south-east is completely uninhabited and also surrounded by other similar glacier valleys. The whole area constitutes the largest glaciated area in the Alps as well as in Europe.

Climbing 

In 1811, the brothers Johann Rudolf (1768–1825) and Hieronymus Meyer, sons of Johann Rudolf Meyer (1739–1813), the head of a rich merchant family of Aarau, with several servants and a porter picked up at Guttannen, having reached the summit for the first time.

The normal route follows the traces of the first climbers, but the long approach on the Aletsch Glacier is no longer necessary. From the area of the Jungfraujoch the route to the summit takes only a few hours. Most climbers start from the Mönchsjoch Hut. After a traverse of the Jungfraufirn the route heads to the Rottalsattel (3,885 m), from where the southern ridge leads to the Jungfrau. It is not considered a very difficult climb but it can be dangerous on the upper section above the Rottalsattel, where most of the accidents happen. The use of the Jungfrau railway can cause some acclimatization troubles as the difference of altitude between the railway stations of Interlaken and Jungfraujoch is almost 3 km. The final section of the climb is accomplished along one of the longest and sharpest arêtes of frozen snow to be found in the Alps, beyond which the eye plunges abruptly down a precipice 3,000 ft. in height into the depths of the Rottal, on the west of the Jungfrau. With perfect steadiness and first-rate guides there is no danger, unless too early in the season, or soon after a heavy fall of fresh snow. When it is necessary to cut steps all the way in hard frozen névé, the work is very laborious, and 3 hours may be consumed in ascending the 725 ft that separate the Sattel from the summit. Some rocks jut out close to the top, but the actual peak consists of a nearly level ridge of frozen snow falling away on either side like a house-top with an excessively steep roof. The view, on one side, commands the icy plains of the Aletsch Glacier, and the highest alpine peaks far and near; on the other overlooks populous valleys that lie at a depth of 2 miles below the spectator's feet.

Source: 

- Official Website of Interalken and Jungfrau.

The painter 
Charles Warren Eaton was an American artist best known for his tonalist landscapes. He earned the nickname "the pine tree painter" for his numerous depictions of Eastern White Pine trees. Eaton was born in Albany, New York to a family of limited means. He starting working at age nine, and worked at a dry goods store in Albany into his early adulthood. When Eaton was twenty-two, a friend's amateur painting sparked his interest in art. He moved to New York City in 1879 to work during the day and attend classes at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League at night. He also used his time off to practice sketching.
Eaton's entrance into the art world coincided with a profound change in the prevailing artistic style in America. In the late 1870s the highly realistic and detailed Hudson River School manner, which had dominated the American art scene for over forty years, was giving way to a much looser, moodier style that younger artists were bringing home from Europe. This new style, which would later come to be known as tonalism, emphasized low-key colors and tended to depict intimate settings rather than scenes of grandeur. Eaton adopted this new style in New York and became friends with two other tonalist artists, Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster.
Eaton reached his maturity as an artist in the 1890s and 1900s with two distinctive landscape subjects. The first subject, tonalist in style, was a landscape typically containing pasture, trees and sometimes a small patch of water or stone fence. The overall mood in these paintings is one of intimacy. The second subject, more stately in manner, was a landscape with a grouping of tall pine trees, often backlit with the glow of a setting sun. He developed this second subject into some of his largest works, and was so successful with them he became known. Eaton almost never included human or animal figures in his landscapes.
Eaton worked primarily in oil and watercolor. He was a founding member of the American Watercolor Society. He exhibited at the well-known Macbeth Gallery in New York for over thirty years, in Paris via the famous dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, and at important international expositions. He also served on numerous exhibition juries. For reasons that are unclear but possibly political in nature, Eaton never gained full membership to the National Academy (though he was elected into the Academy as an Associate Academician in 1901) nor to the Society for American Artists.
Despite his success with tonalism, Eaton gradually discarded the shadowy tonalist style and began painting with brighter colors, especially after 1910. Never a true impressionist, Eaton painted in a loosely realist style. Many works from his later career depicted European scenes, where Eaton traveled regularly as an adult. He particularly favored the countryside around Bruges as well as Lake Como in Italy, which he painted with a particularly bright palette.
By the 1920s Eaton's output and creativity had faded. The Great Depression demolished the art market, and Eaton's sales dried up. He moved to Bloomfield, New Jersey in the 1880s, and lived a quiet retirement with his sister and niece before his death in 1937. He was buried at Bloomfield Cemetery. His works, like many artists of his generation, were nearly forgotten for decades until a resurgence of interest in the late twentieth century.

CHOGOLISA PHOTOGRAPHED BY VITTORIO SELLA

VITTORIO SELLA  (1859-1943)

 Chogolisa (7,668 m - 25,157 ft).  

Pakistan

Photographed  during the 1909 historical expedition of the Duke of Abruzzi 
© The Sella Foundation

The mountain 

Chogolisa  (7,668 m- 25,157 ft). also called  Bride Peak is a mountain in the Karakoram region of Pakistan. It lies near the Baltoro Glacier in the Concordia region which is home to some of the highest peaks of the world. Chogolisa has several peaks, the highest on the SW face  is Chogolisa I (7,668 m- 25,157 ft). The second highest at 7,654 metres on the NE side is Chogolisa II, once named Bride Peak by Martin Conway in 1892.
In 1909, a expedition led by Duke of the Abruzzi reached 7,498 m (24,600 ft) from a base camp located on the northern side and a high camp on the Chogolisa saddle at 6,335m (photo above). Bad weather stopped the team from ascending further, but their climb established a world altitude record.
Hermann Buhl and Kurt Diemberger attempted Chogolisa in 1957 after they had successfully summitted Broad Peak behind Marcus Schmuck and Fritz Wintersteller a few weeks earlier. On June 25 they left camp I and camped in a saddle at 6,706m on the SE ridge. On June 27 a sudden snow storm forced them to retreat and on the descent, Buhl broke off a big cornice and fell into the mountain's near vertical north face. His body has never been found.
In 1958, a Japanese expedition from Kyoto University led by Takeo Kuwabara made the first ascent of Chogolisa II, placing M. Fujihira and K. Hirai on top.
The first ascent of Chogolisa I was made on August 2, 1975 by Fred Pressl and Gustav Ammerer of an Austrian expedition led by Eduard Koblmueller. Koblmueller almost suffered the same fate as Buhl, as he also fell through a cornice on the ascent; fortunately, he was roped and team members were able to pull him to safety.
Source: 
- Chogolisa in Peakware.com

The Photographer

Vittorio Sella is a mountain italian climber and photographer who took his passion for mountains from his uncle, Quintino Sella, founder of the Italian Alpine Club.  He accomplished many remarkable climbs in the Alps, the first wintering in the Matterhorn and Mount Rose (1882) and the first winter crossing of Mont Blanc (1888).
He took part in various expeditions outside Italy:
- Three in the Caucasus in 1889, 1890 and 1896 where a summit still bears his name;
- The ascent of Mount Saint Elias in Alaska in 1897
- Sikkim and Nepal in 1899
- Possibly climb Mount Stanley in Uganda in 1906 during an expedition to the Rwenzori
- Recognition at K2  and Chogolisa in 1909
- In Morocco in 1925.
During expeditions in Alaska, Uganda and Karakoram (K2- Chogolisa), he accompanied the Duke of Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia.
Sella continues the practice of climbing into his old age, completing his final attempt in the Matterhorn at the age of 76; a climb he had to interrupt the rise following an accident in which one of his guides injured. He died in his hometown during World War II.  His photographic collection is now managed by the Sella Foundation.
His photos mountain are still  considered today to be among the finest ever made.
Jim Curran believes that "Sella remains probably the greatest photographer of the mountain.  His name is synonymous with technical perfection and aesthetic refinement. "
The quality of the pictures of Vittorio Sella is partly explained by the use of a view camera 30 × 40 cm, despite the difficulty of the transportation of such a device, both heavy and fragile in places inaccessible; to be able to transport it safely, he had to make special pieces that can be stored in saddle bags.  His photographs have been widely distributed, either through the press or in the galleries, and were unanimously celebrated; Ansel Adams, who was able to admire thirty-one in an exhibition that was organized at Sella American Sierra Club, said they inspired him "a religious kind of sense of wonder."  Many of his pictures were taken in the mountains for the very first time in the History, which give them a much artistic, historical  but also scientific value ; for example, one could measure the decline in the Rwenzori glaciers in Central Africa.
Source:
 -  The Georgian Museum of Photography

DANXIA SHAN / 丹霞山 BY WANG YUANQUI / 王原祁

WANG YUANQUI  (1642-1715)

Danxia Shan (2,142 m -7,028 ft)
China

 In Danxia Shan, 1699, ink on roll, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

The mountain
 Danxia Shan / 丹霞山  (2,142 m -7,028 ft), which mean Mount Danxia, is a noted scenic mountainous area near Shaoguan city in the northern part of Guangdong, People's Republic of China. It is described on the local signage as a "world famous UNESCO geopark of China". The Danxia area is formed from a reddish sandstone which has been eroded over time into a series of outcrops surrounded by spectacular cliffs and many unusual rock formations known as Danxia landform. There are a number of temples located on the mountains and many scenic walks can be undertaken. There is also a river winding through the mountains on which boat trips can be taken.
Among other attractions that make the Danxia range interesting, the area has the following characteristic stone formations:
Yang Yuan Stone, (Yangyuan "male/father stone") bearing a remarkable resemblance to a phallus
Yin Yuan Stone or Yinyuan hole, which somewhat resembles the female vulva. Breasts Stone, human breast-shaped rocky outcrops on a cliff hanging 30 m above the ground. Sleeping Beauty, a rocky range resembling a sleeping maiden.
In the 2010 UNESCO list of world heritage sites, Mount Danxia was recorded as a natural World Heritage Site as part of China's Danxia landform.

The painter 
Wang Yuanqi / 王原祁 was a Chinese painter of the Qing dynasty. Wang was born in Taicang in the Jiangsu province and tutored in painting by his grandfather Wang Shimin (1592–1680).  His style name was ' Mao-ching ' and his sobriquet was ' Lu-t'ai '. Wang is a member of the Six Masters of the early Qing period, also known as the 'Four Wangs, a Wu and a Yun'. They are also often regarded as the principal figures of the 'Orthodox School' of Chinese landscape painting.
Wang Yuanqi was two years old when the New Qing Dynasty was founded (1644). He rose to prominence as a court official and eventually was appointed curator of the imperial collection during the reign of the Qing Emperor Kangxi. He remained a court official throughout his long career and died at age 73 in 1715.
His landscapes followed the model of the Yuan Dynasty artists who broke away from the Northern Song tradition of rendering landscapes "real enough to walk through" to more personal abstractions. His style and technique demonstrates influences from, for example, the artist Huang Gongwang, especially in the use of dry brush strokes and ink washes and his use of colour, often making "colour patterns a component of his dense compositional structure, complementing the force of abstract design with the rhythmic flow of colour." His 1711 ink and color-on-silk painting, Landscape in the Style of Huang Gongwang, is in Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum collection and his version of Wang Wei's (now lost) eighth century hand scroll, The Wang River Villa, also painted in 1711, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

HVANNADALSHNUKUR VOLCANO IN VINTAGE POSTCARD 1955

VINTAGE POSTCARD 1955 

Hvannadalshnjúkur (2,109.6 m - 6,921 ft)

Iceland

The volcano

Hvannadalshnjúkur (2,109.6 m - 6,921 ft)  (pronounced KWANNA-dalsh-nyooker) is the highest peak in Iceland. Prior to 2005, it had been stated to be 2,119m but an official survey in 2005 revised this. It is actually the highest point on a crater rim of the volcano, Oræfajökull, located in extreme southeast Iceland only a few kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. The volcano itself is massive, the largest post-glacial volcano in Iceland and, according to my research, only exceeded in mass by Etna as far as European volcanoes go. But this fact pales in comparison when you consider that Oræfajökull is but a small part of the massive glacier, Vatnajökull.
Vatnajökull (meaning Lake Glacier, named after sub-glacial lakes under its center) is the largest glacier in Iceland and the largest glacial ice cap in Europe. At approximately 8500 square kilometers, it is larger than all of continental Europe's glaciers put together.  This glacier takes up 1/12 of the country of Iceland and contains approximately 3300 cubic kilometers of ice. The average thickness of the glacier is 400 meters with the greatest thickness being over 1100 meters. It is interesting that scientists believe it was not formed during the last great Ice Age but during a cold period about 2500 years ago.
Vatnajökull has had five recorded eruptions with the latest three coming in 1996, 1998 and most recently in 2004.  The 1996 eruption caused large floods taking out bridges and cutting off eastern and western Iceland from each other for a time. Oræfajökull has had two recorded eruptions in 1362 and 1727. The 1362 eruption was the greatest tephra fall in Icelandic history and caused the area's abandonment (the name means something like "glacier wasteland").
Hvannadalshnukur sits adjacent to Skaftafell National Park. Created in 1967, it covers 1700 square kilometers and lies on the west side of the peak between three of Vatnajökull's 46 outlet glaciers (Skeiðararjökull to the west, Morsarjökull to the north and Skaftafellsjökull to the east). To the immediate north of Skaftafell is a finger of land with amazing hikes and sites (see section below for details or click on the link in this paragraph). Skaftafell itself has worthy climbs of both technical rock and glacier and is an oasis of color and life in an area of southeastern Iceland that is so close to a massive drainage of the giant glacier where a huge amount of flat stream-filled sand dominates the coast. Skaftafell enjoys better weather and more sunshine hours than anywhere else in southeastern Iceland as it is protected from wind and rain by the volcano.
Climbing
The first ascent of Hvannadalshnukur was on August 17, 1891 when a British man named Frederick W. W. Howell was guided up by locals Pall Jonsson and Thorlakur Thorlaksson.

Vintage postcards

Postcards became popular at the turn of the 20th century, especially for sending short messages to friends and relatives. They were collected right from the start, and are still sought after today by collectors of pop culture, photography, advertising, wartime memorabilia, local history, and many other categories.
Postcards were an international craze, published all over the world. The Detroit Publishing Co. and Teich & Co. were two of the major publishers in the U.S, and sometimes individuals printed their own postcards as well. Yvon were the most famous in France. Many individual or anonymous publishers did exist around the world and especially in Africa and  Asia (Japan, Thailand, Nepal, China, Java) between 1920 and 1955. These photographer were mostly local notables, soldiers, official guides belonging to the colonial armies (british french, belgium...) who sometimes had rather sophisticated equipment and readily produced colored photograms or explorers, navigators, climbers (Vittorio Sella and the Archiduke of Abruzzi future king of Italy remains the most famous of them).
There are many types of collectible vintage postcards.
Hold-to-light postcards were made with tissue paper surrounded by two pieces of regular paper, so light would shine through. Fold-out postcards, popular in the 1950s, had multiple postcards attached in a long strip. Real photograph postcards (RPPCs) are photographs with a postcard backing.
Novelty postcards were made using wood, aluminum, copper, and cork. Silk postcards–often embroidered over a printed image–were wrapped around cardboard and sent in see-through glassine paper envelopes; they were especially popular during World War I.
In the 1930s and 1940s, postcards were printed on brightly colored paper designed to look like linen.
Most vintage postcard collectors focus on themes, like Christmas, Halloween, portraits of movie stars, European royalty and U.S. presidents, wartime imagery, and photos of natural disasters or natural wonders. Not to mention cards featuring colorful pictures by famous artists like Alphonse Mucha, Harrison Fisher, Ellen Clapsaddle, and Frances Brundage.

KOLSASS MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY CLAUDE MONET

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)

  Kolsås or Kolsass  mountain  (342 m - 1,122 ft)

Norway

Four "portraits" of Mont Kolsass in 1895 

1.  In Mont Kolsass, 1895, oil on canvas,  Musée Marmottan, Paris 

2. In Mont Kolsass, 1895, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay. Paris 

3. In Mont Kolsass, reflets roses 1895, oil on canvas, Private collection, USA.  

4. In Mont Kolsass,  tempête de neige 1895, oil on canvas, Private collection, Japan

The mountain 

Kolsås or Kolsass Mountain (342 m - 1,122 ft) is a wooded mountain ridge in the municipality of Bærum, Norway. Geologically, Kolsås belongs to the Oslo Graben area. Its two peaks (one at 387m the other at 342m) consist of hard rhomb porphyric lava covering softer rocks, forming steep cliffs to the east, south and west. An old farm beneath the mountain has the name Kolsberg. The first element in this name is the genitive case of the old male name Kolr, and the last element is "berg" (mountain). The parish and municipality of Bærum (Old Norse Bergheimr) is probably named after this prominent mountain. The last element in the name of the mountain was later changed to ås (mountain ridge) to distinguish it from the name of the farm.

The area from Kolsås to Dælivannet is a protected landscape area from 1978 (five square kilometers), with four nature reserves: Skotta, Dalbo, Kolsåsstupene and Kolsåstoppen nature reserve.

Kolsås has been a training area for climbers since beginning of the 20th century. Today it is the largest rock climbing area in the Oslo region. The wall Øvre Sydstup on the southern wall has more than 200 climbing routes. The northern hillside of Kolsås has alpine skiing facilities.

Kolsåsbanen is part of the subway rail system Oslo T-bane, running from downtown Oslo to Kolsås station, via Gjettum station and Hauger station.

The military base Kolsås leir, partly located inside the mountain, was home of NATO's Allied Forces Northern Europe (AFNORTH) until 1994.

The area has occurrences of old petroglyphs, tumuli and limestone quarries.

The French painter Claude Monet painted Mont Kolsaas in 1895 in a series of 4 paintings (see above)  one is permanently shown at the Musée d’Orsay , an other in Musée Marmottan. in Paris The 2 others shows on this blog are held in private collections in  USA and Japan. 

The painter 

Oscar-Claude Monet better known as Claude Monet  was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting « Impression, soleil levant » (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons exactly like the japanese artist  Hokusai (1760-1849) did with his 36 views of Mount Fuji.
Monet repeated this kind of exercice de style with his series on Les Petites Dalles

Monet and Mont Kolsass
 A text  in french  from the book Claude Monet, une vie dans le paysage by Marianne Alphant - Editions Hazan, 1993.

 « Au cours  l'hiver 1895 le peintre français fit un séjour en Norvège. et peignit a plusieurs reprises à différentes heures du jour et dans différentes conditions climatiques une montagne, le mont Kolsaas. Mais sitôt réalisées leur auteur n'en fut guère satisfait et elles furent vite éclipsées par l'exposition des Cathédrales. Des vingt-sept ou vingt-huit qui furent recensées, le musée Rodin n'en propose qu'une douzaine, issues de collections publiques (Orsay, Marmottan) aussi bien que privées (Japon, Etats-Unis) et déjà présentées à Stavanger, en Norvège.
Monet effectua ce long voyage vers le Nord sur l'invitation de son beau-fils Jacques Hoschedé, pour saisir quelques effets de neige qu'il escomptait bien capter facilement là-bas. En quoi il se trompait généreusement, erreur à l'origine d'un de ses plus intéressants ratages. 
Les quatre «portraits» du mont Kolsaas sont assez intrigants en ce que l’on y perçoit tout l'art du peintre pour «rendre» l'impalpable  bien que cela l'entraînent vers des contrées inexplorées.  « Le motif se met à flotter dans une atmosphère qui ne le porte plus, ne le soutient plus, l'abandonnant au gré d'une humeur vagabonde, à la manière d'un nuage libre de dériver au gré des vents. L'impression d'échec provient alors d'une incapacité à arrimer la figure, à saisir l'objet à bras le corps, à se tenir d'aplomb face à ce qui le surplombe. Mais la valeur inestimable de cet apparent échec excède largement cet effet de brouillon. (…) 
Les peintures  ne doivent pas leur sentiment d'incomplétude à une quelconque précipitation mais bien plutôt au désir de se fondre dans un immense éloge à la blancheur. (…) 
 Le mont Kolsaas ressemble de la sorte au dernier souffle ou à l'éternuement d'un linceul qui, l'instant suivant, s'affaissera dans l'indéterminé d'une forme sans contour. Autrement dit, l'informe. Ces quelques peintures représentent sans doute l'une des rares tentatives de distinguer la neige de la blancheur, de séparer les deux corps comme on le ferait dans une expérience chimique de dissociation. Car la neige n'est pas blanche, pas plus que le blanc n'est la couleur de la neige. L'un et l'autre entrent doucement en conflit pour que, dans l'intervalle, à la faveur d'une anecdote ­ petit pont ou rivière ­, se glisse l'élément qui permettra de rassurer la vision. Entre la neige et la blancheur, il y a un mariage fatal qu'il faut à tout prix éviter faute de s'y endormir. Entre le ciel et le bleu, c'est pareil mais c'est une autre histoire. Les deux histoires se rejouent chaque fois qu'un peintre essaie de fixer leur frontière, leur bord extrême. Comment cette peinture pourrait-elle alors s'achever ?.  "

 

___________________________________________

2016 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

WETTERHORN PAINTED BY BARONESS HELGA VON CRAMM

BARONESS HELGA VON CRAMM (1840-1919)

The Wetterhorn (3, 692m -12, 113ft)

 Switzerland

In Weterhorn seen from the Little Scheideck,  Christmas card chromolithograph, 1870 or 880 

The mountain 
The Wetterhorn (3,692m-12,113ft) in the  Bernese Alps, towers above the village of Grindelwald. Formerly known as Hasle Jungfrau, it is one of three summits of a mountain named Wetterhorn sensu lato, or the "Wetterhцrner", the highest summit of which is the Mittelhorn (3,704 m) and the most distant the Rosenhorn (3,689 m). The Mittelhorn and Rosenhorn are mostly hidden from view from Grindelwald. The Grosse Scheidegg Pass crosses the col to the north, between the Wetterhorn and the Schwarzhorn.
Climbing 
The Wetterhorn summit was first reached on August 31, 1844, by the Grindelwald guides Hans Jaun and Melchior Bannholzer, three days after they had co-guided a large party organized by the geologist Edouard Desor to the first ascent of the Rosenhorn. The Mittelhorn was first summitted on 9 July 1845 by the same guides, this time accompanied by a third guide, Kaspar Abplanalp, and by Stanhope Templeman Speer. The son of a Scottish physician, Speer lived in Interlaken, Switzerland.
A September 1854 ascent by a party including Alfred Wills is much celebrated in Great Britain. Apparently believing to be the first ascendant, Wills' description of this trip in his book "Wanderings Among the High Alps" (published in 1856) helped make mountaineering fashionable in Britain and ushered in the systematic exploration of the Alps by British mountaineers, the so-called golden age of alpinism.  Despite several well-documented earlier ascents and the fact that he was guided to the top, even in his obituary in 1912 he was considered to be "certainly the first who can be said with any confidence to have stood upon the real highest peak of the Wetterhorn proper" (i.e. the 3,692 m summit).  In a subsequent corrigendum, the editors admitted two earlier ascents, but considered his still "the first completely successful" one.
In 1866, Lucy Walker was the first documented female ascendant of the peak.
The 24-year-old English mountaineer William Penhall and his Meiringen guide Andreas Maurer were killed by an avalanche high up on the Wetterhorn on 3 August 1882.
The famed guide and Grindelwald native Christian Almer climbed the mountain many times in his life, including on his first of many trips with Meta Brevoort and her nephew W. A. B. Coolidge in 1868. His last ascent was in 1898 at the age of 70 together with his wife to celebrate their golden anniversary on top.  Winston Churchill is also supposed  to have climbed the Wetterhorn in 1894.
The Wetterhorn summit was the intended terminal for the world's first passenger carrying aerial tramway, but only the first quarter was built. It was in operation until the beginning of World War I.
There are four "normal" routes, depending on direction and season. You will need rope, ax, crampons. Hundred years a ago, a cable car from Grindelwald (1200 m) in three stages was planned. The lowest part can still be seen and is an interesting reminder of the enthusiasm investors had before World War I.
Wetterhorn is neither a difficult, nor an easy mountain. Each access has its specialty. Three huts and  one bivouac are at your choice and if you are in good shape and can climb 2500 meters in one morning, you do not have to bother about huts. The choice of the huts varies according to the season. In summer you have two huts with extremely nice walks. Even if you do not succeed in climbing the Wetterhorn, you will like the view and the variation of the climb to the Dossen - or Gleckstein huts. If you have an inexperienced person or child with you, a short rope is nice to have. Since the Wetterhorn can be seen from most mountains within 100 miles, the view is unique. Although everything up there is snow and ice, looking perpendicularly down to the green pastures of Grindelwald provides an unforgettable contrast

The painter 
Baroness Helga von Cramm was a German and Swiss water-colourist and graphic artist. She made her quite famous with her in chromolithograh Christmas cards.  Helga von Cramm lived in Britain, Switzerland (St. Moritz), Germany and Italy, and Florence.
Helga was the eldest child of Wolf Frederick Adolf Freiherr von Cramm-Burchard  Helga's father, having been brought up in the Court at Brunswick, educated at the court of knights, served in the Brunswick Cuirassiers , was an equerry and an hereditary Chamberlain and Lord of the Kings Bedchamber (that of William VIII of Braunschweig). Later he retired to his estate at Rhode. Her brother Aschwin Thedel Adelbert Freiherr v. Sierstorpff-Cramm, is one of the four great-grandfathers of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, now Princess Beatrix, and mother of the present king, Willem-Alexander. Helga was thus a great-great aunt of the former Dutch Queen.
In the United Kingdom, from 1877, she exhibited at the : Society of Women Artists,  Royal Scottish Academy,  Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours,  Dudley Gallery, Fine Art Society, Glasgow Institute,Grosvenor Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts ,Royal Society of British Artists and at a few other places...

GRAND CANYON OF THE YELLOWSTONE BY THOMAS MORAN

THOMAS MORAN  (1837-1926)

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone  (240 - 370 m / 800 - 1,200 ft  

United States of America (Wyoming)

 1.   In The Grand Canyon, 1900,  oil on canvas Smithsonian American Art Museum

2.  In The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,1904, oil on canvas, Honolulu Museum of Art.

The mountain  

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone- not to be confused with Grand Canyon of the Colorado River or any other Grand Canyons - is the first large canyon on the Yellowstone River downstream from Yellowstone Falls in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The canyon is approximately 24 miles (39 km) long, between 800 and 1,200 ft (240 and 370 m) deep and from .25 to .75 mi (0.40 to 1.21 km) wide.
The specifics of the geology of the canyon are not well understood, except that it is an erosional feature rather than the result of glaciation. After the Yellowstone Caldera eruption of about 600,000 years ago, the area was covered by a series of lava flows. The area was also faulted by the doming action of the caldera before the eruption. The site of the present canyon, as well as any previous canyons, was probably the result of this uplift and related faulting, which allowed erosion to proceed at an accelerated rate. The area was also covered by the glaciers that formed during several ice ages. Glacial deposits probably filled the canyon at one time, but have since been eroded away, leaving little or no evidence of their presence.
Although trappers and prospectors who visited the Yellowstone region had knowledge of the canyon earlier, the first significant descriptions were publicized after the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869 and the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition of 1870.
When Charles W. Cook first viewed the canyon after traveling west from the Lamar Valley on September 20, 1869, he subsequently wrote these words in his journal:
«I was riding ahead, the two pack animals following, and then Mr. Folsom and Mr. Peterson on their saddle horses. I remembered seeing what appeared to be an opening in the forest ahead, which I presumed to be a park, or open country. While my attention was attracted by the pack animals, which had stopped to eat grass, my saddle horse suddenly stopped. I turned and looked forward from the brink of the great canyon, at a point just across from what is now called Inspiration Point. I sat there in amazement, while my companions came up, and after that, it seemed to me that it was five minutes before anyone spoke. »
Source
- Wikipedia page 

The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection. In the photograph depicting President Barack Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres in the Oval Office it is seen on the wall: the portrait of George Washington is between City of Washington From Beyond the Navy Yard (1833) by George Cooke (on the left) and The Three Tetons (1895) by Thomas Moran (on the right).
Source: 
- The National Gallery of Art, Washington