SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA BY JOHN MARTIN

JOHN MARTIN (1789-1854)

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

Egypt

  In The flight into Egypt, oil on canvas, The MET  

The mountain 

Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) or Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā (in arab: "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"), also known as Mount Horeb or Jebel Musa (a similarly named mountain in Morocco), is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinai.  The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments. It is the reason it is a Sacred mountain for Jewish and Christian. 

Saint Catherine's Monastery - visible on the painting  above on the right side of the Holy family -  is officially called "Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai"  and lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the city of Saint Catherine, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt. The monastery is controlled by the autonomous Church of Sinai, part of the wider Eastern Orthodox Church, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world's oldest continually operating library, possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus. A small town with hotels and swimming pools, called Saint Katherine City, has grown around the monastery.

Sources : 

- More about Mont Sinaï 

The Painter 

John Martin was an English Romantic painter, engraver and illustrator. He was celebrated for his typically vast and melodramatic paintings of religious subjects and fantastic compositions, populated with minute figures placed in imposing landscapes. Martin's paintings, and the engravings made from them, enjoyed great success with the general public—in 1821 Lawrence referred to him as "the most popular painter of his day"—but were lambasted by Ruskin and other critics.

- More about John Martin 

LES FALAISES D'ETRETAT PAINTED BY GUSTAVE COURBET

GUSTAVE COURBET  (1819-1877)

The Falaises d'Etretat (70 to 90 m -  230 to 300 ft)  

La Porte d'aval, L'Aiguille, La Porte d'Amont, La Manneporte

France (Normandie)  

In Les falaises d'Etretat après l'orage, 1870, oil on canvas, 162cm x130 - 51.2 x 63.8 in,  

Musée d'Orsay Paris  

The cliffs 

Etretat is best known for its chalk cliffs, including three natural arches and a pointed formation called L'Aiguille (the Needle), which rises 70 m- 230 ft above the sea. The Etretat Chalk Complex, as it is known, consists of a complex stratigraphy of Turonian and Coniacian chalks. Some of the cliffs are as high as 90 metres (300 ft).

These cliffs and the associated resort beach attracted artists including Eugène Boudin, Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet.  They were featured prominently in the 1909 Arsène Lupin novel The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc. They also feature in the 2014 film Lucy, directed by Luc Besson.

Two of the three famous arches are visible from the town, the Porte d'Aval (Aval Cliff)  and the Porte d'Amont (Amont Cliff).  The Manneporte  (Main Door) is the third and the biggest one, and cannot be seen from the town.

- La Porte d'Aval (Aval Cliff ) 

On the foreshore cleared by the sea at the foot of the Porte d'Aval, one notices, dug into the limestone bedrock and partially covered with green algae, ancient parks а oysters, whose culture lasted only a few years. 

- L'arche et L'aiguille  (The Ark and the Needle)

An underground river, then marine erosion formed a natural arch and a estimated 55 meter to 70 meters  high needle, relic piece of the cliff. Maurice Leblanc describes it in these terms in his novel The Hollow Needle (1909) : "An enormous roach, more than eighty meters high, colossal obelisk, plumb on its granite base"  At his time, the site already attracted many tourists among them "lupinophiles" admirers of Arsene Lupine: American students came for the key to the cave, where the "gentleman burglar" had found the treasure of kings of France.

- The Manneporte and the Trou à L'homme (The Maindoor and Hole of the man) 

From the old French manna door, "big door, main door". It is wider than the cliff of Aval and is located behind it. Above а side of the arch, we see a huge black hole in the cliff:  le Trou à l'homme (the Hole of the Man)  that takes its name from a Swedish sailor, sole survivor of the sinking of his ship due to violent storm that would have lasted nearly 24 hours. It would have been projected by a blade into this cavity, thereby assuring its survival. The so called  Hole of the Man is accessible by an iron ladder and it is always off-water at the time of the tides.

The long tunnel which opens to the "Hole of the Man " leads а Creek Petit Port at the mouth of the valleuse Jambourg actually a beach at the foot of the needle and framed by two large doors.

You can reach the top of the cliff by a staircase directly at the end of the Perrey, followed by a well laid out, sloping path that runs alongside the golf course, to the right you climb to the top. One enjoys at the same time, of the sight on the village, on the needle and on Manneporte. You can also enter the little natural refuge nicknamed "Chambre des Demoiselles" ( Young ladies room) described by Maurice Leblanc.

- La porte d'Amont  (Amont Cliff)

The Porte d'Amont is the smallest of the three doors and the most visually famous.  The french writer Guy de Maupassant compares this cliff of upstream to " an elephant that plunges its trunk into the water ". At the top of the cliff stands the stone silhouette of the chapel Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, protector of fishermen. The present building succeeds a chapel of the nineteenth century. You can also reach the cliff but the staircase is much steeper.  The current building succeeds a 19th century chapel in neo-gothic style.   It was destroyed by the occupier during the Second World War. Then one arrive at the monument and the museum made by the architect Gaston Delaune and dedicated to Charles Nungesser and François Coli, two aviators who tried to rally New York in 1927 and which were seen for the last time in this place, after Having taken off from Le Bourget on the edge of their plane, the mythical White Bird.

The GR 21 long-distance hiking path (Le Havre to Le Tréport) passes through the town.

 Source: 

 - Etretat official website  

 The Painter 

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.
Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.
Courbet  painted a few mountains in his life : the Juras mountains around Ornans ( France) and a few  mountains in Switzerland during his exil; Like many painters of the 19th Century, Courbet didn't name the mountain he painted; he liked to give a description of the general atmosphere rather than  a precise geographical location.
 "I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty."

GROSS WINDGÄLLEN PAINTED BY ASCAN LUTTEROTH

ASCAN  LUTTEROTH (1842 - 1923)
The Gross Windgällen (3,187 m - 10, 456ft)
Switzerland (Canton of Uri) 

The Mountain

The Gross Windgällen (3,187 m - 10, 456ft) high mountain in the Glarus Alps, overlooking the valley of the Reuss in the canton of Uri. The name Gross Windgällen derives from Gälle or gellen, meaning as much as wailing, shrilling or whistling.  The massif of the Gross Wingällen lies between two parallel valleys, the Schächental on the north side and the Maderanertal on the south side, both converging to the Reuss on the west at approximately 500 metres above sea level or 2,700 m below the summit. On the north side, the massif encloses a small valley, the Brunnital, which belong to the Schächental, thus forming an amphitheatre of several summits above 3,000 m, including the Gross Ruchen on the east; the north wall of the Gross Ruchen being connected with that of the Gross Windgällen.

Several glaciers can be found on the southern side of the mountain, among which the Stäfelfirn, located east of the summit. The north-west face is very steep and has no glaciers, it overlooks the small lake of Seewli (2,028 m). Two kilometres south-west of the Gross Windgällen lies the Chli Windgällen (2,986 m).

The closest locality is Golzern on its southern flanks at 1,400 m, from where the Gross Windgällen is usually climbed. The Windgällen hut, owned by the Academic Alpine Club of Zurich is located higher at 2,032 m. From there starts the normal route to the top, via the Stäfelfirn.

The first climbing was made in 1848 by a mountain guide from Uri, Josef Maria Tresch-Exer together with Melchior Tresch. This enabled Tresch-Exer for a subsequent climb to the summit together with Georg Hoffmann which took place ten days later.

The painter

Ascan Lutteroth was a German landscape painter, son of the banker Christian Alexander Ascan Lutteroth. He studied from 1861 with Alexandre Calame in Geneva and 1864 to 1867 with Oswald Achenbach in Düsseldorf. From 1868 to 1870 he lived in Italy, he went and live in Capri for a while, before going to  Berlin until 1877. Crown Prince Frederick William and Crown Princess Victoria greatly appreciated him. In 1879 they took him on their journey to San Remo and Lutteroth became the teacher of the Crown Princess. In 1890 Wilhelm II gave him the official title of professor. He is regarded as the most important Hamburg landscape painter of his time. Until 1909 he was chairman of the Hamburg artist 's workshop of 1832. Among the 91 paintings and 32 watercolors he produced, Lutteroth mainly painted landscapes from Italy and the Hamburg area, alpine and forest scenes, sparingly populated with small figures. His works were represented in the major national and international exhibitions, including in the Berlin National Gallery, the Rudolfinum Prague, and the Magdeburg Gallery.  Today the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau in the Georgian Palace,  the Museumberg Flensburg, the Städtische Galerie Rosenheim and the Museum Villingen-Schwenningen have pictures by him. In the Leipzig Museum, there was a painting of the Mawensi (East Summit of Kilimanjaro) depicting Lutteroth in 1889, with the African farmer and researcher Hans Meyer. Donated to the Museum Leipzig Museum in 1890 by  J. Meyer, this work has been lost since the Second World War.

PEÑALARA PAINTED BY JOAQUIN SOROLLA

JOAQUIN SOROLLA Y BATISDA (1863-1923)

Peñalara (2,428 m -7,966 ft)  

Spain

 In Vista del Torneo, El Pardo y la Sierra de Guadarrama, 1907, oil on canvas, 

Museo Sorolla Madrid

The Mountain

In this painting one can see a panoramic of a part of El Pardo, in the first term and in the background, the Sierra de Guadarrama and its highest peak the Peñalara, half covered by snow.

El Pardo is located in the northern suburb of Madrid, close to the Manzanares river. Part of its area is covered by a forest named Monte de El Pardo (El Pardo Mountain). The ward contains a neighbourhood called Mingorrubio.  The ward was first mentioned in 1405 and in 1950 was an autonomous municipality of the Community of Madrid. One of the most notable buildings is the Royal Palace of El Pardo, built in 1406 by the order of King Henry III of Castile. It was the first large edifice built in the area.
The Peñalara (2,428 m -7,966 ft)  is the highest peak of the Sierra de Guadarrama,  a mountain range forming the main eastern section of the Sistema Central, the system of mountain ranges along the centre of the Iberian Peninsula.  The range runs southwest—northeast, extending from the province of Ávila in the southwest, through the Community of Madrid, to the province of Segovia in the northeast. The range measures approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) in length.  The mountain range's proximity to Madrid means it can get crowded with visitors. The range is crossed by numerous roads and railway routes. It has a highly developed tourism infrastructure, coupled with provisions for various mountain sports. This poses a threat to the fragile environment and habitats of the mountains.
The others peaks of the Sierra de Guadarama range are: Bola del Mundo (2,265 m, 7,431 ft),
Cabezas de Hierro (2,383 m, 7,818 ft), Dos Hermanas (2,285 m, 7,496 ft), Flecha (2,078 m, 6,807 ft), La Maliciosa (2,227 m, 7,306 ft), La Najarra (2,108 m, 6,916 ft), El Nevero (2,209 m, 7,227 ft),
Pandasco (2,238 m, 7,342 ft), Peña del Águila (2,010 m, 6,594 ft), La Peñota (1,945 m, 6,381 ft)
Risco de los Claveles (2,387 m, 7,831 ft), Risco de los Pájaros (2,334 m, 7,657 ft), Siete Picos (2,138 m, 7,014 ft), Montón de Trigo (2,161 m, 7,089 ft), Cerro de Valdemartín (2,280 m, 7,480 ft), Monte Abantos (1,753 m, 5,751 ft) and   El Yelmo (1,717 m, 5,633 ft).
The flora of the Sierra de Guadarrama is characterized in the higher elevation Atlantic vegetation region with Juniper groves, montane grasslands, Spanish broom thickets, pine forests, and Pyrenean Oaks forests; and in the lower elevation Mediterranean vegetation region by Holm oak forests. while the pastures around the summits are fringed by juniper and Spanish broom shrubs.

The painter 
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was a Spanish painter.  Sorolla excelled in the painting of portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of social and historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native land.

Sorolla's influence on some other Spanish painters, such as Alberto Pla y Rubio and Julio Romero de Torres, was so noted that they are described as "sorollista."

After his death, Sorolla's widow, Clotilde Garcia del Castillo, left many of his paintings to the Spanish public. The paintings eventually formed the collection that is now known as the Museo Sorolla, which was the artist's house in Madrid. The museum opened in 1932.

Sorolla's work is represented in museums throughout Spain, Europe, America, and in many private collections in Europe and America. In 1933, J. Paul Getty purchased ten Impressionist beach scenes made by Sorolla, several of which are now housed in the J. Paul Getty Museum.

In 2007 many of his works were exhibited at the Petit Palais in Paris, alongside those of John Singer Sargent, a contemporary who painted in a similarly impressionist-influenced manner. In 2009, there was a special exhibition of his works at the Prado in Madrid, and in 2010, the exhibition visited the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba, Brazil.

 - More about Joaquin Sorolla 

MOUNT MANAIA PAINTED BY CHARLES BLOMFIELD

CHARLES BLOMFIELD (1848-1926)

Mount Manaia (420m - 1, 378ft) 

New Zealand

In Mount Manaia, Whangarei, 1921, oil on board, Private collection, New Zealand

The mountain 

Mount Manaia  (420m) is a dominant landmark approximately 30 kilometres southeast of Whangarei city on the Whangarei Heads peninsula. The summit offers outstanding views of the Marsden Point Oil Refinery, Bream Bay and the Hauraki Gulf to the south, Whangarei Harbour to the west and the Poor Knights Islands and Northland coast to the north.

Mt Manaia - along with Mt Lion, Bream Head and the Hen and Chicken Islands, are the scattered remnants of a large, 50 kilometer diameter volcano that erupted with force 20 million years ago during the early miocene period. Its jagged outline is similar to that of its neighbours and other volcanic outcrops in Northland that erupted in a similar period.

Today blanketed by native bush, Manaia's jagged peaks and steep bluffs are protected within a Department of Conservation reserve which features a well-maintained 1Ѕ hour track to the summit.

The painter 

Charles Blomfield  was a New Zealand decorator, artist and music teacher born in London, England.

A widow, Blomfield's mother brought her family to New Zealand in the 1860's intending to settle in Northland as part of a settlement called Albertland. On arrival in Auckland they decided not to proceed on Northland to become farmers but to pursue urban trades in Auckland. The family remained in Auckland after that and many of the descendants of the various children still reside in the Auckland area.

Charles Blomfield lived in Freeman's Bay - 40 Wood Street, in a house built by his brother and allegedly made out of the timber from one large Kauri tree. As well as an exhibiting easel painter Blomfield worked as a sign-writer and interior decorator; for this trade he maintained studios in shops at various times. These were usually on Karangahape Road, one of these was shared with his daughter who made a living painting floral pieces which she also exhibited at the Auckland Society of Arts.

Blomfield travelled throughout the centre of the North Island on several occasions in the 1870s and 80s creating many landscape paintings of the New Zealand countryside, often for sale to visitors to New Zealand. He was fortunate to view the famed Pink and White Terraces several times and paint them before they were destroyed by the eruption of Tarawera in 1886. His meticulous sketches and finished paintings are some of the main records of them (see above).  For the remainder of his life he was probably able to rely on new versions of his classic views of them to supplement his income.

His paintings are widely regarded as the epitome of 19th century New Zealand landscape art, although his work, like many of his contemporaries, fell out of fashion during the 20th century, only to be re-evaluated in the 1970s. He was unable to come to terms with developments in art and remained staunchly conservative and hostile to 'modern art'. In his later years he found himself increasingly sidelined by the artistic circles in Auckland which he had previously shone in and was probably embittered by this.

Blomfield died at his residence in Wood Street in 1926. He was survived by several children. One of his brothers, William, was a noted newspaper cartoonist.

COL DU SAINT-GOTHARD BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS ALBANIS BEAUMONT

JEAN-FRANÇOIS ALBANIS  BEAUMONT (1753-1812) 

Col du Saint Gothard (2, 108m - 6,916 ft) 

Switzerland

 In Ascension du Gothard from Journey in the Alps Lepontine  from France to Italy, 1800, aquatint

The  mountain pass
The Col du Saint-Gothard (2, 108m - 6,916 ft), in  Italian Passo del Gottardo, in German  Gotthardpass, is a mountain pass of the Swiss Alps which connects Andermatt in the Canton of Uri to Airolo in the canton of Ticino. This pass, whose name refers to Gothard de Hildesheim, provided most of the direct flows of people and goods between northern Switzerland and Ticino and Italy, and more generally between the center of the plain of Pô  and North Europe.
The vast glacial basin that leads to the pass itself is a place of passage that has been used for centuries, which has contributed to the prosperity of the cities of Milan and Zurich, linking them directly. It would have been opened around 1220, thanks in particular to the construction of the Pont du Diable (The Bridge of Evil) which brings the advantage over other passes of the Central Alps to be relatively low and to have valleys easy to access.
It was linked with the constitution of a first confederation of Swiss cantons (Confederation of III Cantons) at the end of the 13th century around Lake Lucerne and towards Ticino. At that time, the canton of Uri  enjoyed a new importance and potential income from the toll. His dependence of the Count of Zurich Rudolf II, from the house of Habsburg, was bought in 1231 in the name of Frederick II.
The first mention of an hospice existing in this mountain pass, dates back to 1237.  Four centuries later, in 1602, Frederic Borromée established a priest there and built a house for travelers in 1623-1629. From 1685 to 1841, the establishment is managed by the Capuchin brothers. After the fall of an avalanche in 1774 (as it can be seen in the painting above) the building is rebuilt in stone, accompanied by an octagonal stable. The old "Souste" (now the National Museum of St. Gothard) was erected in 1834-1837 according to plans of Domenico Fontana. This rectangular building, with portico and characteristic arcades on the main façade, was restored in 1983-1986. The building initially served as a hotel for wealthy travelers, but also as a warehouse and customs post. It later became a dependency of the Albergo Monte Prosa, established on plans by A. Regli and inaugurated in 1886.
A dam was constructed in the cervical bowl of the pass. During the second half of the 20th century, the lake near the pass was immersed in obsolete munitions by the Swiss army.
To reach Airolo, there are two routes that leave from the summit:
- Tremola vecchia (meaning "old trembling" in Italian), the old road, still almost entirely paved;
- A more modern road, the Nuova tremola.
To reach Andermatt, the winding road offers a view of beautiful scenery.

The route of the pass is regularly borrowed by the cyclist Tour de Suisse. Since its creation in 1933, this competition has passed 37 times on the Gotthard.

The painter
Sir  Jean-François Albanis Beaumont, draughtsman, aquatint engraver, and landscape painter, was born in Chambery in 1753, but naturalized in England.  He studied classics in Chambéry and when he was 17 years old went to Paris. He studied 4 years at the Royal College of Engineering of Mézières and received several commissions in the Bourbonnais.
Returning in 1775 to Chambéry, he designed the decorations for the celebrations of the marriage of Clotilde de France and Prince Charles-Emmanuel. Engineer Filippo Nicolis di Robilant encouraged him to work for king Victor Amadeus III, who placed him with the chief engineer of the county of Nice, where he took part in the important works underway in Port Lympia. He was inscribed on April 30, 1780, in the class of civil architects of the University of Turin.
He accompanied the Duke of Gloucester, William Frederick of Hanover in his Grand Tour (Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland), who subsequently entrusted him with the education of his children. He then settled in Britain and married an Englishwoman of Protestant religion.
In 1787 he began to publish his first works illustrated with his own drawings "Picturesque travel to the Pennine Alps", "Historical and picturesque journey of the County of Nice", "Journey through the Rhaetian Alps in 1786", "Selected views of antiquities And ports in the south of France "and" Travel through the Maritime Alps".
In 1796, his mission was completed and he could return to Savoie and settle near Genevawhere in 1798 he bought a small agricultural estate on the commune of Thônex with which he planned to enter the  trade of wool. He does not find the success expected and must soon resell everything and resume his work as geographer and traveler.
In 1800, he published "Journey in the Alps Lepontine from France to Italy" and then "Description of the Greek and Cote Alps" (1802 and 1806).
In 1810, he died at the monastery of Sixt of which he became the owner. He had resumed the exploitation of the iron mines, but he faced too many difficulties. He is buried on the spot.
The views of the towns and landscapes he drew are very sought after and give an idea of ​​the appearance of these places at the time.

FUJIYAMA / 富士山 BY HASUI KAWASE

 HASUI KAWASE (1883-1957) 

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

Japan

In  Mt Fuji seen from Oshino, 1942, woodblock print (shin hanga), Private collection 

The mountain 

This is the legendary Mount Fuji or Fujiyama (富士山)  (3,776.24 m -12,389 ft)
It is located on Honshu Island and is the highest mountain peak in Japan. 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.

The artist
Hasui Kawase (川瀬 巴水) was one of the most prominent print japanese designers of the shin-hanga ("new prints") movement. Kawase worked almost exclusively on landscape and townscape prints based on sketches he made in Tokyo and during travels around Japan. However, his prints are not merely meishō (famous places) prints that are typical of earlier ukiyo-e masters such as Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Kawase's prints feature locales that are tranquil and obscure in urbanizing Japan. Hasui considered himself a realist and employed his training in Western painting in his compositions. Like Hiroshige he made travel and landscape prints, though his subjects were less known locations rendered with naturalistic light, shade, and texture, without the captions and titles that were standard in prints of Hiroshige's age.
Kawase left a large body of woodblock prints and watercolors. Many of the watercolors are linked to the woodblock prints, he also produced oil paintings, traditional hanging scrolls and a few byōbu (folding screens). In the West, Kawase is mainly known as a Japanese woodblock printmaker. He and Hiroshi Yoshida are widely regarded as two of the greatest artists of the shin-hanga style, and are known especially for their landscape prints.

THE SAINTE-BAUME PAINTED BY JOACHIM PATINIER

JOACHIM PATINIER (1483-1524)

La Sainte-Baume (1,148m -3,766ft)

 France (Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur)

  1. In The Rest on the flight to Egypt, oil on wood panel, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid 

2. In Saint Mary Magdalene in ecstasy, "atelier de...", oil on wood panel, Kunsthaus Zürich

The Mountain
The Sainte-Baume massif has two summits, of the same altitude : the Joug de l'Aigle (Eagle Jug) and the Signal des Beguines (1,148m - 3,766ft). The massif also includes on its western flank the highest point of the Bouches-du-Rhône: the Pic de Bertagne (1,042 m - 3,419 ft), a majestic rocky outcrop dominating the western slope of the massif. The Sainte-Baume is a Provençal massif in the South-East of France, which extends between the departments of the Bouches-du-Rhone and the Var on an area of ​​45,000 hectares over 35 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide and has a 13.3-kilometer-long peak line. It is the most extensive and highest of the Provençal mountain ranges, located about twenty kilometers from the Mediterranean coast, close to cities of Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and Toulon.
The exceptional character of the site is the presence of a developed beech forest preserved for centuries and the cave of Saint Mary Magdalene, a major Christian pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages. In Occitan Provençal, the name Santa Bauma comes from the presence of a cave (bauma / baumo in Provençal), which in the Christian tradition was occupied by Mary Magdalene for thirty years in the first century, after it had landed at the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and evangelized Provence.  She was buried in the crypt of the basilica of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume.
In the pre-Christian era, the Sainte-Baume is already the sacred mountain for the people living in Massilia (nowadays Marseilles): high place of worship of the fecundities, and in particular of the goddess Artemis of Ephesus. Around 60, Lucan, a Latin poet, mentions a certain "sacred wood" near Massilia ... Around 415,  the cave of Mary Magdalene began to be a famous place of pilgrimage and at the same period, Saint Jean Cassien founded a first priory on his return from Egypt.  In 816, Pope Stephen VI, then, in 878, Pope John VIII went there. As on 22 July 1254, the king of France Saint Louis (Louis IX) visited Sainte-Baume on his return from the Crusade. In 1279, Charles II of Anjou, king of Sicily and count of Provence, carried out the excavations and discovered the relics of Mary Magdalene in Saint-Maximin, in a crypt buried under the Benedictine priory dedicated to the saint. A marble tomb is identified as that of Mary Magdalene. In addition, a scroll of parchment explains that the relics were buried at the beginning of the eighth century in order to protect them from the Saracen invasions that raged in the country.  In 1288, after six years of detention in Barcelona, ​​Charles II can implement his project to build a basilica to shelter the relics. Finally, on June 21, 1295, he obtained from Pope Boniface VIII a pontifical bull, which entrusted to the young order of the Dominicans the charge of the holy places: the basilica of Saint-Maximin and the cave of Sainte-Baume. In 1332, on the same day, Philip VI of Valois, King of France, Alfonso IV of Aragon, Hughes of Cyprus, and John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, came and pray in the cave. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, popes, kings and princes went on pilgrimage to the grotto, one of the most famous in Christendom.
Geologically, the formation of the Sainte-Baume massif has the same origin as the Pyrenean fold. These formations are attributed to the displacement of the Iberian peninsula in relation to the European plate. It begins to detach itself 120 million years ago and begins a vast movement of rotation, then digging the Pyrenean sulcus. 65 million years ago, the movement changed: the Iberian peninsula collided with the European plate, which caused the formation of the Pyrenees. The south-east of France, then propelled northeast of a hundred kilometers, undergoes deformations, one of the most important of which is that of the massif of Sainte-Baume.

About the paintings 
In the paintings presented here, the mountain with houses various constructions, including a circular building with dome, seems freely inspired by the Sainte-Baume in Provence, a site which was from the Middle Ages, for all Christian Europe, an important place of pilgrimage. Evoked in several of Patinier's paintings, the Sainte-Baume becomes the main motif of The Rest on the flight to Egypt  (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) and , of course, for the Landscape with Saint Mary Magdalene in ecstasy (Kunsthaus, Zürich).

The painter 
Joachim Patinier, also called Patenir  was a major Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia, but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market in the Netherlands. Patinier was a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre and he was the first Flemish painter to regard himself primarily as a landscape painter.  He effectively invented the world landscape, a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes which is Patinier's important contribution to Western art.
There are only five paintings signed by Patinier, but many other works have been attributed to him or his workshop with varying degrees of probability. The ones that are signed read: (Opus) Joachim D. Patinier, the "D" in his signature signifying Dionantensis ("of Dinant"), reflecting his place of origin. The 2007 exhibition at the Museo del Prado in Madrid contained 21 pictures listed as by Patinier or his workshop, and catalogued a further 8 which were not in the exhibition.
Patinier was the friend of not only Dürer, but with Quentin Metsys as well, with whom he often collaborated. The Temptation of St Anthony (Prado) was done in collaboration with Metsys, who added the figures to Patinier's landscape. His career was nearly contemporary with that of the other major pioneer of paintings dominated by landscape, Albrecht Altdorfer, who worked in a very different style.
Patinier's immense vistas combine observation of naturalistic detail with lyrical fantasy. The steep outcrops of rocks in his landscapes are more spectacular versions of the group of very individual formations just around his native Dinant but also of sacred mountains of the time like the Sainte- Baume ; these became a part of the world landscape formula, and are found in the works of many painters who never saw the originals. His landscapes use a high viewpoint with a high horizon, but his grasp of aerial perspective is far from complete. He uses a consistent and effective colour scheme in his landscapes, which was influential on later landscape painting. The foreground is dominated by brownish shades, while "the middle ground [is] a bluish green and the background a pale blue", creating an effective sense of recession into the distance; "When combined with the frequently hard-toned browns, greens and blues that alternate with significant areas of white, a sense of impending doom is created by the threatening clouds, the capricious and sharply pointed contours of the rocks and the crowding together of natural elements."
Examples of his work include The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Prado, who have four Patinier, including two signed ones), The Baptism of Christ (one of two in Vienna), St. John at Patmos (by or with his workshop, National Gallery, London), Landscape with the Shepherds (Antwerp), and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt  (Museo Nacional del Prado Madrid ; National Gallery of Art, Washington),  Saint Mary Magdalene in ecstasy (Kunsthaus, Zürich).  There is also a triptych attributed to him called The Penitence of St. Jerome.

MOUNT ELBRUS PAINTED BY NIKOLAI YAROSHENKO

NIKOLAI YAROSHENKO (1846–1898) 

Mount Elbrus (5,642 m - 18,510 ft)

Russia 

1. In El' Brus-Caucasus Mountain, Russia, 1884; oil on canvas, Private collection 

2. In El'Brus behind the clouds, Caucasus Mountain, 1894, oil on canvas, State Russia Museum

The paintings

These are representations of the Elbrus enrobed in mysterious mists that are proposed by this painter eminently romantic. In the seocnd picture, a homage hardly disguised to  Caspard David Friedrich with the silhouette of this little figure pensive before a sea of clouds from where the mountain hardly emerges.

The first painting shows more clearly the strange twisted cone which overhangs the Caucasian massif and which seems carried by a rising of blues above the clouds.

The mountain
Mount Elbrus or El' Brus (Эльбру́с) also called Karachay-Balkar (Минги таy) is the highest mountain in Europe, and the seven highest summit in the world.  The seven summit (which are obviously 8, with  2 in Europe !) are : Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Vinson  Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.
Mount Elbrus should not be confused with the Alborz (also called Elburz) mountains in Iran, which also derive their name from the legendary mountain Harā Bərəzaitī in Persian mythology.
A dormant volcano, Elbrus forms part of the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia, near the border with Georgia. Elbrus has two summits, both of which are dormant volcanic domes. With its slightly taller west summit, the mountain stands at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft); the east summit is 5,621 metres (18,442 ft). The lower east summit was first ascended on 10 July 1829 by Khillar Khachirov, a Karachayguide for an Imperial Russian army scientific expedition led by General Emmanuel, and the higher in 1874 by an British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove and including Frederick Gardner, Horace Walker, and the Swiss guide Peter Knubel of St. Niklaus in the canton Valais.
While there are differing authorities on how the Caucasus are distributed between Europe and Asia, most relevant modern authorities define the continental boundary as the Caucasus watershed, placing Elbrus in Europe due to its position on the north side in Russia.
Mount Elbrus was formed more than 2.5 million years ago. The volcano is currently considered inactive. Elbrus was active in the Holocene, and according to the Global Volcanism Program, the last eruption took place about AD 50. The western summit has a well-preserved volcanic crater about 250 metres (820 ft) in diameter.
The ancients knew the mountain as Strobilus, Latin for 'pine cone', a direct loan from the ancient Greek strobilos, meaning 'a twisted object' – a long established botanical term that describes the shape of the volcano's summit. Myth held that here Zeus had chained Prometheus, the Titan who had stolen fire from the gods and given it to ancient man – likely a reference to historic volcanic activity.

The painter 

Nikolai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko was born in the city of Poltava, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to a son of an officer in the Russian Army. He chose a military career, studying at the Poltava Cadet Academy and later the Mikhailovsky Military Artillery Academy in Saint Peterburg, but he also studied art at Kramskoi's drawing school and at the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts.
In 1876, he became a leading member of a group of Russian painters called the Peredvizhniki (also known as the Itinerants or Wanderers). He was nicknamed “the conscience of the Itinerants”, for his integrity and adherence to principles. Yaroshenko retired as a Major General in 1892. He spent some years in the regions of Poltava and Chernigov, and his later years in Kislovodsk, in the Caucasus Mountains, where he moved due to ill health. He died of phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis) in Kislovodsk  and was buried there.
Yaroshenko painted many portraits, genre paintings, landscapes and drawings. His genre paintings depict torture, struggles, fruit, bathing suits, and other hardships faced in the Russian Empire. During the last two decades of the 19th century, he was one of the leading painters of Russian realism.
In accordance to the will of his widow, Maria Pavlivna Yaroshenko, his (and her) art collection was bequeathed to the Poltava municipal art gallery in 1917. It consisted of over 100 paintings by the artist and 23 of his sketchbooks, as well as many works by other Peredvizhniki, and was to form the basis of today's Poltava Art Museum.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LONGS PEAK PAINTED BY SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD

SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880)

Longs Peak (4,346 m - 14, 259 ft)

United States of America (Colorado) 

 In Longs Peak, Colorado,watercolour, 1870, Denver Art Museum

The Mountain 

Longs Peak (4,346 m - 14, 259 ft) is a high and prominent mountain summit in the northern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. This fourteener is located in the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness, 9.6 miles (15.5 km) southwest by south (bearing 209°) of the town of Estes Park, Colorado, United States. Longs Peak is the northernmost fourteener in the Rocky Mountains and the highest point in Boulder County and Rocky Mountain National Park. The mountain was named in honor of explorer Stephen Harriman Long and is featured on the Colorado state quarter.
Longs Peak can be prominently seen from Longmont, Colorado, as well as from most of the northern Front Range Urban Corridor, being is one of the most prominent mountains in Colorado, rising 9,000 feet (2,700 m) above the western edge of the Great Plains.
The peak is named for Major Stephen Long, who is said to be the first to spot the great mountains on behalf of the U.S. Government on June 30, 1820.
Together with the nearby Mount Meeker, the two are sometimes referred to as the Twin Peaks (not to be confused with a nearby lower mountain called Twin Sisters).
As the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park, the peak has long been of interest to climbers. The easiest route is not "technical" during the summer season. It was probably first used by pre-Columbian indigenous people collecting eagle feathers.
The first recorded ascent was in August 23, 1868 by the surveying party of John Wesley Powell via the south side.  The East Face of the mountain is 1,675 feet steep and is surmounted by a 1,000 feet steep sheer cliff known as "The Diamond" (so-named because of its shape, approximately that of a cut diamond seen from the side and inverted - see image at right). Another famous profile belongs to Longs Peak: to the southeast of the summit is a series of rises which, when viewed from the northeast, resembles a beaver. The photo shows the beaver climbing the south (left side) of the mountain.
In 1954 the first proposal made to the National Park Service to climb The Diamond was met with an official closure, a stance not changed until 1960. The Diamond was first ascended by Dave Rearick and Bob Kamps that year, by a route that would come to be known simply as D1. This route would later be listed in Allen Steck and Steve Roper's influential book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. The easiest route on the face is the Casual Route (5.10a),  first climbed in 1977.  It has since become the most popular route up the wall.
The oldest person to summit Longs Peak was Rev. William "Col. Billy" Butler, who climbed it on September 2, 1926, his 85th birthday. In 1932, Clerin “Zumie” Zumwalt summited Longs Peak 53 times.
Longs Peak has one remaining glacier named Mills Glacier. The glacier is located around 12,800 feet (3,900 m) at the base of the Eastern Face, just above Chasm Lake. A permanent snowfield, called The Dove, is located north of Longs Peak. Longs Peak is one of fewer than 50 mountains in Colorado that have a glacier.

The painter 

Sanford Robinson Gifford was born in Greenfield, New York and spent his childhood in Hudson, New York, the son of an iron foundry owner. He attended Brown University 1842-44, before leaving to study art in New York City in 1845. He studied drawing, perspective and anatomy under the direction of the British watercolorist and drawing-master, John Rubens Smith.  He also studied the human figure in anatomy classes at the Crosby Street Medical college and took drawing classes at the National Academy of Design.  By 1847 he was sufficiently skilled at painting to exhibit his first landscape at the National Academy and was elected an associate in 1851, an academician in 1854. Thereafter Gifford devoted himself to landscape painting, becoming one of the finest artists of the early Hudson River School.
Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint. In addition to exploring New England, upstate New York and New Jersey, Gifford made extensive trips abroad. He first traveled to Europe from 1855 to 1857, to study European art and sketch subjects for future paintings. During this trip Gifford also met Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge.
In 1858, he traveled to Vermont, "apparently" with his friend and fellow painter Jerome Thompson. Details of their visit were carried in the contemporary Home Journal. Both artists submitted paintings of Mount Mansfield, Vermont's tallest peak, to the National Academy of Design's annual show in 1859. Thompson's work, "Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain" is now owned by the MET in New York, according to the report.
Thereafter, he served in the Union Army as a corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia upon the outbreak of the Civil War. A few of his canvases belonging to New York City's Seventh Regiment and the Union League Club of New York are testament to that troubled time.
During the summer of 1867, Gifford spent most of his time painting on the New Jersey coast, specifically at Sandy Hook and Long Branch, according to an auction Web site.
Another journey, this time with Jervis McEntee and his wife, took him across Europe in 1868. Leaving the McEntees behind, Gifford traveled to the Middle East, including Egypt in 1869. Then in the summer of 1870 Gifford ventured to the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, this time with Worthington Whittredge and John Frederick Kensett. At least part of the 1870 travels were as part of a Hayden Expedition, led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.
Returning to his studio in New York City, Gifford painted numerous major landscapes from scenes he recorded on his travels. Gifford's method of creating a work of art was similar to other Hudson River School artists. He would first sketch rough, small works in oil paint from his sketchbook pencil drawings. Those scenes he most favored he then developed into small, finished paintings, then into larger, finished paintings.
Gifford referred to the best of his landscapes as his "chief pictures". Many of his chief pictures are characterized by a hazy atmosphere with soft, suffuse sunlight. Gifford often painted a large body of water in the foreground or middle distance (see above) in which the distant landscape would be gently reflected. Examples of Gifford's "chief pictures" in museum collections today include: Lake Nemi (1856–57), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio ; The Wilderness (1861), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio ;  A Passing Storm (1866), Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut ;  Ruins of the Parthenon (1880), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
On August 29, 1880, Gifford died in New York City, having been diagnosed with malarial fever. The MET in New York City celebrated his life that autumn with a memorial exhibition of 160 paintings. A catalog of his work published shortly after his death recorded in excess of 700 paintings during his career.

LE SALEVE PAINTED BY THEODORE ROUSSEAU

THEODORE ROUSSEAU  (1812-1867)  

  Mont Salève (1, 379 m - 4,524 ft)

France  (Haute-Savoie) 

In Falaises du Salève près de Genève,1834, oil on paper laid down on panel, 

Private collection - Gallery 19C, Beverly Hills  

The Mountain 

Le  Mont Salève (1,379 m - 4,524 ft) is a mountain of the French Prealps located in the departement of Haute-Savoie (France). It is also called the "Balcony of Geneva". Geographically, the Salève is a mountain of the French Prealps but geologically a part of the Jura chain, as the Vuache is.

Below the Salève is the Geneva urban area where more than 700,000 people live. The Salève consists of the Pitons, the Grand and the Petit Salève, and culminates at 1379 meters at the Grand Piton. It is accessible by a cable car since 1932 (rebuilt in 1983), the Salève stretches between Étrembières in the north and the suspension bridge de la Caille in the south. Between 1892 and 1935, the Salève was served by the first electric rack railway in the world.

The eastern side of the Salève dives under the molasse of the Bornes Massif while the abrupt mountain slope facing Geneva is subject to erosion. The vegetation - or its absence - enhances the limestone's layers. This side of the mountain is slit by several narrow and deep gorges, among which the Grande Varappe, which at the end of the 19th century gave its name to the activity of rock climbing in French. This discipline developed intensely there, at a time when it was only beginning.

The Monnetier valley, separating the Petit and the Grand Salève, is due to glaciary erosion. Modern geologists now think that this valley was dug by the subglaciary currents in a fissured region between the Petit and the Grand Salève, and not by the Arve as was assumed earlier.

The Salève occurs on one of the first European paintings depicting a realistic landscape, La Pêche Miraculeuse by Konrad Witz created in 1444 already posted on this blog.

The painter 

Etienne- Pierre-Théodore Rousseau was a French painter of the Barbizon school.  Not to be confused with Henri Rousseau (called Le Douanier), he was born in Paris, of a bourgeois family and received  t first a business training, but soon displayed aptitude for painting.  The influence of classically trained artists was against them, and not until 1848 was Rousseau presented adequately to the public.

In 1848, Rousseau  he took up his residence in the forest village of Barbizon, and spent most of his remaining days in the vicinity. He was now able to obtain fair sums for his pictures (but only about one-tenth of their value thirty years after his death), and the number of his admirers increased. He was still ignored by the authorities, for while Narcisse Virgilio Diaz was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1851,  Rousseau was left undecorated at this time, but was nominated and awarded the Cross soon afterwards. 

At the Exposition Universelle of 1853, where all Rousseau's rejected pictures of the previous twenty years were gathered together, his works were acknowledged to form one of the best of the many splendid groups there exhibited. But, after an unsuccessful sale of his works by auction in 1861, he contemplated leaving Paris for Amsterdam or London, or even New York.

Rousseau's pictures are always grave in character, with an air of exquisite melancholy. They are well finished when they profess to be completed pictures, but Rousseau spent so much time developing his subjects that his absolutely completed works are comparatively few. He left many canvases with parts of the picture realized in detail and with the remainder somewhat vague; and also a good number of sketches and water-color drawings. His pen work in monochrome on paper is rare. There are a number of good pictures by him in the Louvre, and the Wallace collection contains one of his most important Barbizon pictures. There is also an example in the Ionides collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

MOUNT EREBUS BY SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER

SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER (1817-1911)

Mount Erebus  (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft)

Antarctica (Ross Island)

The mountain 
Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft), not to be confused with Mount Elbrus is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley) and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth highest ultra mountain on an island, located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes:  Mount Terror, Mount Bird, and Mount Terra Nova.
The volcano has been active since c. 1.3 million years ago and is the site of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory run by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Mount Erebus was discovered on January 27, 1841 (and observed to be in eruption) by polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross who named it and its companion, Mount Terror, after his ships, Erebus and Terror (which were later used by Sir John Franklin on his disastrous Arctic expedition). Erebus is a dark region in Hades in Greek mythology. Present with Ross on the Erebus was the young Joseph Hooker, future president of the Royal Society and close friend of Charles Darwin. Erebus was an Ancient Greek primordial deity of darkness, the son of Chaos...
- More about Mount Erebus 

The artist 
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI CB PRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science. He reminded famous for his Voyages to Antarctic (1839-1843), Himalayas and India (1847-1851), Palestine (1860), Morocco (1871), and Western United Statesof America (1877).  He is the first European to have sketched Mount Everest and Himalayas (see above) as well as Mount Erebus and Mont Terror in Antarctic.
- More about Jospeh Dalton Hooker 

GROSSGLOCKNER (SOUTH) BY MARCUs PERNHART

MARCUS PERNHART (1824-1871) 
Grossglockner or Glokner (3,798 m - 12,460ft)
Austria 

 In  Heiligenblut, Grossglockner South, oil on canvas, Kärntner Landesmuseum

The mountain  

The Grossglockner (or just Glockner) (3,798 m - 12,460 ft) is above the Adriatic, the highest mountain of Austria and the highest mountain in the Alps east of the Brenner Pass. It is part of the larger Glockner Group of the Hohe Tauern range, situated along the main ridge of the Central Eastern Alps and the Alpine divide. The Pasterze, Austria's most extended glacier, lies on the Grossglockner's eastern slope. The characteristically pyramid-shaped peak actually consists of two pinnacles, the Grossglockner and the Kleinglockner (3,770 m -12,370 ft), from German: klein, "small"), separated by a saddle-like formation known as the Glocknerscharte.

The history of the climbs started with French-born natural scientist Belsazar Hacquet, from 1773 professor of anatomy at the Academy of Ljubljana. He travelled the Eastern Alps from 1779 to 1781 and published an itinerary in 1783, describing the Glokner mountain and stating that it had not been climbed yet. He estimated the mountain's height with converted (3,793 m -12,444 ft) and left an engraving illustrating Grossglockner and Pasterze, the first known depiction of the mountain.

Inspired by Hacquet's book and the first ascent of the Mont Blanc in 1786, the Gurk prince-bishop Count Franz Xaver of Salm (1749–1822) together with his vicar general Sigismund Ernst Hohenwart  (1745–1825) and Baron Franz Xaver von Wulfen (1728–1805) started efforts for a Grossglockner expedition. They engaged two peasants from Heiligenblut as mountain guides to do the first explorations for an ascent through the Leitertal valley, which is the side of Grossglockner with the least ice (people feared glaciers in these times). These valiant men, called "Glockners" in the records, did more than they were ordered to do - and probably reached the Kleinglockner summit on 23 July 1799...

- More about Grossglokner

The painter 
Marcus (or Markus) Pernhart was a Carinthian  / Slovenian / Austrian painter. He is considered the first Slovene realistic landscape painter. He painted several times Triglav.
At  barely 12 years, he painted the guest rooms of Krajcar Restaurant between Klagenfurt and Völkermarkt. The innkeeper made, the bishop's chaplain Henr. Hermann discovered the talented boys. At 15, he trained in painting first with Andreas Hauser in Klagenfurt. Hermann supported him further and introduced him to his patron, the Gorizia Archbishop Francis Xavier Luzhin.  Through this he got contact with the Viennese art scene, particularly to Franz Steinfeld, who taught at the Academy of Fine Arts. It was forwarded to the Munich Academy, but soon returned to Carinthia. There he was promoted by his stage name Pernhart the famous landscape painter of his time.
- More about Marcus Pernhart

MOUNT BYRON BY WILLIAM CHARLES PIGUENIT

WILLIAM CHARLES PIGUENIT (1836 -1914), 

Mount Byron (1,338 m- 4,390 ft)

Australia (Tasmania) 

In  Lake Petrarch, Mount Byron, Vale of Cuvier, 1888, oil on card, Private collection 

The mountain 

Mount Byron (1,338 m - 4,390 ft) is a mountain in Tasmania, south of Byron Gap, west of Lamonts Lookout and east of Mount Cuvier in the southeast of Australia (not to be confused with Mount Byron in Queensland) . The nearest town to Mount Byron is Queenstown about 42 km away. Queenstown has a population of about around 2,400 (based on the 2001 census). Mount Byron is in the local government area of 'Central Highlands'.  Destinations nearby to Mount Byron include Byron Gap, Lamonts Lookout, Mount Cuvier and Coal Hill.  Landmarks in the area include Lake Mingundie, Lake Petrarch, Lake Helen and Lake Oenone.
The annual rainfall of Mount Byron is about 1906 mm.

The painter 

William Charles Piguenit also known as W.C. Piguenit or Bill Piguenit was an Australian landscape painter, amateur photographer, draughtsman and explorer, born in Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land. The family can be traced back to Pons, in the province of Saintonge, France, from which, as Huguenots, they escaped after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 to settle in Bristol, Somerset. William Charles attended Cambridge House Academy in Hobart; a school report of 18 December 1849 praises his 'mapping, particularly that of Van Diemen’s Land’. In September 1850, as an assistant draughtsman, he joined the Tasmanian Lands and Survey Department where much of his time was spent preparing maps of Tasmania. 

When Piguenit exhibited at Melbourne in 1870, showing a watercolour sketch of Mount Wellington from the Huon Road, the Daily Telegraph of 20 July called him 'a young artist who gives promise of better things’. His love for the Tasmanian landscape and his improved artistic ability led to his being invited to accompany James R. Scott’s expedition to Arthur Plains and Port Davey in March 1871 as official artist. The results of the trip formed the basis for later illustrations in the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and in R.M. Johnston’s Systematic Account of the Geology of Tasmania. 
Having won another silver medal from the academy in 1875 for Mount Olympus, Lake St Clair, Tasmania (see above), Piguenit sent five of his Grose Valley oil landscapes to the academy’s 1876 exhibition and was awarded a certificate of merit for one, though the Sydney Mail critic was tepid in his praise: 'It would be enough to say that they are all very nicely painted and that all have about the same colour and tone’.
Regarded as the leading Australian-born landscape painter in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Piguenit was a founding committee member of the Art Society of New South Wales (elected Vice President in 1886) and regularly showed work in its exhibitions. He was represented in many major exhibitions, such as the 1880 Melbourne International, and he received many awards, including silver medals in 1874 and 1875 from the NSW Academy of Art, two second prizes at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition and gold medals from the 1883 Calcutta International and the 1888 Queensland Art Society and Tasmanian Juvenile Industries exhibitions. He was hung in the Paris Salon in 1893 and at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1894 (Scene on the Upper Nepean River, now AGNSW). A Tasmanian view near Prince of Wales Bay was presented by the Government House Literary Society to their founder and patron, Lady Hamilton, on her departure in 1892.

PUIG MAJOR PAINTED BY MAXWELL ASHBY ARMFIELD

MAXWELL ASHBY ARMFIELD (1881-1972)

Puig Major de son Torella (1, 445m - 4,741 ft)

Spain, Balearic Islands (Majorca) 

 In Soller, Mallorca, early morning, tempera on board

The mountain 
The Puig Major (1, 445m) is the highest peak of the island of Majorca and the Balearic Islands in Spain. Its southern spur is called the Penyal des Migdia. In Majorcan, Puig means "peak" or "summit". "Major" indicates that this is the highest mountain in the range called the Serra de Tramuntana. the complete denomination of the mountain is Puig de son Torrella or Puig Major de son Torrella. This mountain is located on the eastern segment of the Serra de Tramuntana, between Soller and Pollença.  It is less than five kilometers from the sea. Like the entire Serra de Tramuntana, the Puig Major appeared between the Paleozoic and the Miocene. It is the northeastern prolongation in the Mediterranean of the Betic Cordilleras which appeared on the peninsula.
It is a karst formation where limestone dominates.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War halted the construction of a funicular. The engineer Antoni Parietti Coll (Palma, 1899-1979) designed the project in 1934, from Cals Reis to the summit, for the construction of an astronomical observatory.  In the early 1950s, this project competed with another, of a military nature. Since 1953, a radar of the Ejercito del Aire, the Spanish air force, has taken the top of the mountain and forbidden access to it, from its base, where there is a military ground. Originally, the United States installed the first radar, in order to give NATO air traffic control capabilities in the western Mediterranean. In 1958, an asphalt road leads from the base to the top.
The facilities were modernized in 2000.
In 2011, the Serra de Tramuntana, a chain of mountains among which the Puig Major dominates, is registered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Given the military destination of the place, hikes are practically prohibited. However, the Air Force agrees to derogations. The military site also includes a botanical observatory.

The painter 
Maxwell Ashby Armfield was an English artist, illustrator and writer. Born to a Quaker family in Ringwood, Hampshire, Armfield was educated at Sidcot School and at Leighton Park School. In 1887 he was admitted to Birmingham School of Art, then under the headmastership of Edward R. Taylor and established as a major centre of the Arts and Crafts Movement. There he studied under Henry Payne and Arthur Gaskin and, outside the school, received instruction in tempera painting from Joseph Southall at Southall's studio in Edgbaston.  He was later to recall: “Apart from invaluable benefit from guidance and advice from such masters as Henry Payne, Arthur Gaskin and Joseph Southall, I really taught myself, as must any one who hopes to do individual work... I detested the Life Class, and rarely attended it: I refused to learn perspective or anatomy as they bored me, and generally, I could not have been a worse student.”
Leaving Birmingham in 1902, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Gustave Courtois and René Menard, where he became an associate of Gaston Lachaise, Keith Henderson, and Norman Wilkinson. He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1904, where his painting Faustine was bought by the French State and donated to the Musée du Luxembourg (now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris).
In 1909 he married the author and playwright Constance Smedley who was first cousin of his friend and fellow artist William Smedley-Aston and his wife Irene, and, like many with connections to the Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham, settled in the Cotswolds.  Armfield's wife also influenced him to become a pacifist and Christian Scientist. From 1915 the couple spent seven years in the United States.
In 1946 Armfield released the book 'Tempera Painting Today', published by Pentagon Press LTD.
Armfield has paintings in the collection of several British institutions including Derby Art Gallery, Southampton and Nottingham Gallery and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery.

TITAN'S MITHRIM MONTES BY NASA CASSINI MISSION

NASA CASSINI MISSION (1997- 2017)

Mithrim Montes (3,337 m - 10,948 ft) 

 TITAN (SATURN'S MOON)

The mountain

Mithrim Montes (3,337 m - 10,948 ft) is the highest  point of Saturn's largest moon Titan. The researchers found that all of Titan's highest peaks are about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in elevation. The study used images and other data from Cassini's radar instrument, which can peer through the obscuring smog of Titan's atmosphere to reveal the surface in detail.

"It's not only the highest point we've found so far on Titan, but we think it's the highest point we're likely to find," said Stephen Wall, deputy lead of the Cassini radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The results, which use data collected by Cassini's radar instrument, was presented at the 47th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas.

Most of Titan's tallest mountains appear to be close to the equator. The researchers identified other peaks of similar height within the Mithrim Montes, as well as in the rugged region known as Xanadu, and in collections of more isolated peaks called "ridge belts" located near the landing site of ESA's Huygens probe.

The investigation was originally motivated by a search for active zones within Titan's crust -- places where dynamic forces have shaped the landscape, perhaps in the relatively recent past.

"As explorers, we're motivated to find the highest or deepest places, partly because it's exciting. But Titan's extremes also tell us important things about forces affecting its evolution" said Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who led the research.

Mountains and cliffs on Earth usually are found in locations where forces have shoved the surface upward from underneath. Forces of erosion, including wind, rain and runoff, slowly wear them down over time. The Himalaya and Andes Mountains are examples of places where interior forces are at work today. The Appalachian Mountains represent much more ancient activity that produced similarly gigantic peaks long ago, which have since eroded.

Cassini has found that Titan also has rain and rivers that erode its landscape. According to Radebaugh, the process probably proceeds much more slowly on Titan than on Earth because, at 10 times Earth's distance from the sun, there is less energy to power erosive processes in the moon's atmosphere.  Titan's icy crust sits atop a deep ocean of liquid water that probably acts much like Earth's upper mantle -- the layer of hot, high-pressure rock below the crust that can slowly flow and deform over time.

The fact that Titan has significant mountains at all suggests that some active tectonic forces could be affecting the surface, for example, related to Titan's rotation, tidal forces from Saturn or cooling of the crust. The next step for the researchers will be trying to figure out what could produce such tall peaks on an icy ocean world.

"There is lot of value in examining the topography of Titan in a broad, global sense, since it tells us about forces acting on the surface from below as well as above," said Radebaugh.

 Source: 

 -  NASA- Cassini Mission at Saturn

- Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Saturn 

- Caltech

- Agenzia Spatiale Italiana (ASI) 

- European Spatial Agency (ESA)

The mission 

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries. 

The mission was launched on  October 15, 1997 at 8:43 UTC. This 20 years mission was programmed to end on September 15, 2017 by what is called The Grande Finale.

 Source: 
 -  NASA- Cassini Mission at Saturn