SAVOIA PEAK / MOUNT STANLEY PHOTOGRAPHED BY VITTORIO SELLA

  

VITTORIO SELLA (1859-1943)

Mont Stanley / Savoia Peak (4,977 m - 16, 330 ft)

Congo - Uganda border 

 1. In Savoia peak taken from Alexandra Peak with Mt Luigi di Savoia in the background, 1906 

2. In Savoia peak in the distance with Senecio forest, 1906, The Georgian Museum of Photography

The mountain 

Mount Stanley  (5,109 m -16,762 ft) is located in the Rwenzori range and is the highest mountain of both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and the third highest in Africa, after Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 m -19,340ft) and Mount Kenya (5,199 m - 17,057ft). The peak and several other surrounding peaks are high enough to support glaciers. Mount Stanley is named for the journalist and explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley. It is part of the Rwenzori Mountains National Park, a UNESCO world Heritage Site. 

Mt. Stanley consists of two twin summits and several lower peaks which are : 

Margherita Peak (5,109m - 16,763ft), Alexandra Peak (5,091m - 16,703ft), Albert Peak (5,087m - 16,690ft), Savoia Peak (4,977m - 16,330ft), Ellena Peak (4,968m -16,300ft), Elizabeth Peak (4,929m - 16,170 ft), Phillip Peak (4,920m - 16,140ft), Moebius Peak (4,916m - 16,130 ft) and Great Tooth (4,603m - 15,100ft).

Mt. Stanley was first climbed in 1906 by the Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia , Duke of the Abruzzi, (1873-1933),  J. Petigax, C. Ollier, and J. Brocherel. He is known as well for his Arctic explorations and for his mountaineering expeditions, particularly to Mount Saint Elias (Alaska–Yukon) and K2 (Pakistan–China). Margherita Peak is named after Queen Margherita of Italy the prince's cousin.

The Rwenzori Mountains National Park is considered a model for integration of cultural values into the Protected Area Management framework as an innovative approach to resource management, the first of its kind in Africa.  As a result the local communities have embraced collaborative resource management initiatives. Given its significance as one of the biodiversity hotspots in the Albertine Rift, various local and international NGOs have supported the management and conservation of the property. A General Management Plan guides management operations on-site. Key challenges to address include illegal felling of trees, snow recession due to global warming, human population pressure adjacent to the property and management of waste generated through tourism operations. UWA is addressing the above threats through resource protection, community conservation education, research and ranger-based monitoring, ecotourism and transboundary initiatives with the DRC. The long-term maintenance of the integrity of the property will be achieved through sustainable financing, ecological monitoring, continued collaboration with key stakeholders and regional cooperation.

The artist
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   in 1909;
- In Morocco in 1925.
During expeditions in Alaska, Uganda and Karakoram (K2), 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.

MOUNT BRAZEAU BY ARTHUR. P. COLEMAN

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)

Mount Brazeau (3, 500 m - 11, 483 ft) 

Canada (Alberta) 

 In The Brazeau from camp 17, 1892 watercolor 

The mountain 

Mount Brazeau  (3, 470m - 11, 380ft)  is a mountain in  Canada (Alberta),  located in the upper Coronet Creek Valley of Jasper National Park. It stands west of the Coronet Glacier and south of Maligne Lake. The mountain was named in 1902 by Arthur P. Coleman (who painted the mountain as well) after Joseph Edward Brazeau, who had provided his translation skills to the Palliser Expedition. The name Brazeau was originally applied to the Brazeau River by Sir James Hector ( the most important members of the Palliser Expedition, becoming the first to travel through much of the Canadian Rockies.) 

Mount Brazeau is an impressive mountain with several striking and formidable faces falling down to Maligne Lake and Coronet Creek in southern Jasper National Park. The West Face is massive and near vertical, rising nearly 1,000 metres (3,280 ft.) from Coronet Creek to the summit plateau, which is draped in the glacial mass of the Brazeau Icefield. The south and southwest slopes, topped with the Brazeau Icefield, are low angle and gentle, but are riddled with a minefield of hidden crevasses. 

Mount Brazeau is high on the list of Canadian Rockies 11,000 footers, depending on your perspective, either the thirteenth, seventeenth or twenty first highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies; 21 th on the generally accepted list of 54 summits. 

Jasper National Park  (11,228 square kilometres -4,335 square miles) is the largest of Canada's Rocky Mountain Parks and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The painter 
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian a geologist, professor, minerals prospector, artist, Rockies explorer, backwoods canoeist, world traveller, scientist, popular lecturer, museum administrator, memoirist and...  one of Canada’s most beloved scientist.
Arthur Coleman is a fine example of that rare bird, a polished amateur artist whose drawings and paintings stand comfortably beside those of many professionals. He was active during the time when sketching and painting was ceding to photography the task of recording the visible world. Although he was also a photographer, painting was, for him, both a poetic and a descriptive pursuit, a way of wrapping an artistic expression around a phenomenon he was interested in or moved by. Thus motivated, Coleman's paintings give much joy and command a good deal of respect. The more surprising, perhaps given that he used to introduced himself more as a geologist than a painter.
Coleman travelled throughout the United States for professional conferences as well as geological field work.  He visited many of the major American mountain ranges including: the American Cordillera Mountains (Washington, Oregon and California); the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California and Nevada); Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho); and the Appalachian Mountains (eastern United States). Pleistocene glaciation had extended in Northern Europe as far south as Berlin and London and covered an area of two million square miles. Coleman also visited such countries as India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Scandinavia, Bolivia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In his final years he made two expeditions to the Andes in Colombia, to mountains in Southern Mexico and to two mountains in Central America.  He achieved the first ascent of Castle Mountain in 1884, and in 1907, he was the first white man to attempt to climb Mount Robson. He made a total of eight exploratory trips to the Canadian Rockies, wholly four of them looking for the mythical giants of Hooker and Brown.
From 1901 to 1922, he was a Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1919 to 1922. From 1931 to 1934, he was a geologist with the Department of Mines of the Government of Ontario. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1900 and was its President in 1921. In 1929, he was appointed Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
 "Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park is named in his honor.  He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.
He planned to climb "hi" mountain, "Mount Coleman"'in the Albertan Rockies, and had also prepared a trip to British Guiana, but death intervened.
He was author of:
- Reports on the Economic Geology of Ontario (1903)
- Lake Ojibway; Last of the Great Glacial Lakes (1909)
- The Canadian Rockies: New and Old Trails (1911)
- Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient (1926), and was co-author of Elementary Geology (1922).
- The Last Million Years (1941) edited by George F. Kay

PARNASSUS PAINTED BY CARL ROTTMANN

CARL ROTTMANN (1797-1850),

Parnassus (2, 457m - 8,061ft)

Greece

In Sikyon mit Parnass, 1839, oil on canvas, Neue Pinakothek Munchen

The mountain 

Parnassus  or Mount Parnassus (2, 457m - 8,061ft), in greek Parnassos (Παρνασσός) which means "the mountain of the house of the god", is a mountain of limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi, north of the Gulf of Corinth.  According to Greek mythology, this mountain was sacred to Dionysus and the Dionysian mysteries; it was also sacred to Apollo and the Corycian nymphs, and it was the home of the Muses. The mountain was also favored by the Dorians.  Parnassus is one of the largest mountainous regions of Mainland Greece and one of the highest Greek mountains. It spreads over three municipalities, namely of Boeotia, Phthiotis and Phocis, where its largest part lies. Its highest peak is Liakouras. 

This relation of the mountain to the Muses offered an instigation to its more recent "mystification", with the poetic-artistic trend of the 19th century called "Parnassism". The Parnassic movement was established in France in the decade 1866–1876 as a reaction to Romanticism with a return to some classicistic elements and belief in the doctrine "Art for the Art", first expressed by the poet Theophile Gautier. The periodical Modern Parnassus issued for the first time by Catul Mendes and Xavier Ricard contained direct references to Mount.Parnassus and its mythological feature as habitation of the Muses. The Parnassists, who did not exceed a group of twenty poets, exercised a relatively strong influence on the cultural life of Paris, particularly due to their tenacity on perfection of rhyme and vocabulary. Parnassism influenced several French poets, such as Baudelaire, but it also exercised an influence on Modern Greek poets, particularly Kostis Palamas and Gryparis.
The name of the mountain, (Mont Parnasse in french ), was also given to a quarter of Paris on the left banc of the Seine, where artists and poets used to gather. Montparnasse is nowadays one of the most renowned quarters of the city and in its cemetery many personalities of the arts and culture are buried.

The painter 
Carl Anton Joseph Rottmann was a German landscape painter and the most famous member of the Rottmann family of painters. Rottmann belonged to the circle of artists around the Ludwig I of Bavaria, who commissioned large landscape paintings exclusively from him. He is best known for mythical and heroising landscapes. The landscape painter Karl Lindemann-Frommel belonged to his school. Rottmann  received his first drawing lessons from his father, Friedrich Rottmann, who taught drawing at the university in Heidelberg. He formed himself chiefly through the study of nature and of great masterworks. In his first artistic period, he painted atmospheric phenomena. After gaining prominence with Heidelberg at Sunset (a water color), and Castle Eltz, he settled in Munich in 1822 and devoted himself to Bavarian scenery. Here his second period began, and in 1824 he married Friedericke, the daughter of his uncle, Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who served as an attendant at court. Through this connection, he made the acquaintance of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who in 1826/27 sponsored his travels in Italy in order to widen his repertoire, which up to that point consisted solely of domestic, German, landscapes. In Italy, Rottmann made sketches for the 28 Italian landscapes in fresco which he was commissioned to paint in the arcades of the Hofgarten at Munich. The cycle, completed in 1833, gave visual expression to Ludwig’s alliance with Italy, and raised the genre of landscape painting to the height of history painting, the preferred mode of the King’s other great commissions for monumental painting. The frescos unfortunately deteriorated under climatic influences. The cartoons for them are in the Darmstadt Gallery.
In 1834 Rottmann traveled to Greece to prepare for a commission from Ludwig for a second cycle; one might mark here the beginning of his third period. At first also intended for the Hofgarten arcade, the 23 great landscapes were eventually installed in the newly built Neue Pinakothek where they were given their own hall.

EL MISTI PAINTED BY GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

GEORGIA O' KEEFFE (1887–1986)
El Misti or Guagua Putina (5,822m -19,101ft)

Peru

The mountain 

El Misti (5,822m -19,101ft) also known as Guagua Putina, is a stratovolcano located in southern Peru near the city of Arequipa. With its seasonally snow-capped, symmetrical cone, Misti lies between mount Chachani (6,075m - 19,931ft) and Pichu Pichu volcano (5,669 m -18,599 ft).

El Misti  is located at 3,415m above the sea level on the Altiplano and the elevation of the cone is approximatively 2,400m  above the Altiplano base. El Misti has three concentric craters. In the inner crater fumarole activity can often be seen. The symmetric conical shape of El Misti is typical of a stratovolcano, a type of volcano characterized by alternating layers of lava and debris from explosive eruptions, such as ash and pyroclastic flows. Stratovolcanoes are usually located on the continental crust above a subducting tectonic plate. The magma feeding the stratovolcanoes of the Andes Mountains, including El Misti, is associated with ongoing subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate. Its most recent relatively minor eruption was in 1985, 198 years after its previous documented eruption. Near the inner crater six Inca mummies and rare Inca artifacts were found in 1998 during a month-long excavation directed by archaeologists Johan Reinhard and Jose Antonio Chavez. These findings are currently stored at the Museo de Santuarios Andinos in Arequipa. The city center of Arequipa, Peru, lies only 17 kilometers (11 miles) away from the summit of El Misti; the gray urban area is bordered by green agricultural fields. With almost 1 million residents in 2009, it is the second largest city in Peru in terms of population. Much of the building stone for Arequipa, known locally as sillar, is quarried from nearby pyroclastic flow deposits that are white. Arequipa is known as the “White City” because of the prevalence of this building material. The Chili River extends northeastwards from the city center and flows through a canyon between El Misti volcano and Nevado Chachani to the north. Nevado Chachani is a volcanic complex that may have erupted during the Holocene Epoch (from about 10,000 years ago to the present), but no historical eruptions have been observed there.

The painter 

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant and intriguing artists of the twentieth century, known internationally for her boldly innovative art. Her distinct flowers, dramatic cityscapes, glowing landscapes, and images of bones against the stark desert sky are iconic and original contributions to American Modernism.

Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-1906 and the Art Students League in New York in 1907-1908. Under the direction of William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora, and Kenyon Cox she learned the techniques of traditional realist painting. The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically in 1912 when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow’s emphasis on composition and design offered O’Keeffe an alternative to realism. She experimented for two years, while she taught art in South Carolina and west Texas. Seeking to find a personal visual language through which she could express her feelings and ideas, she began a series of abstract charcoal drawings in 1915 that represented a radical break with tradition and made O’Keeffe one of the very first American artists to practice pure abstraction.

O’Keeffe mailed some of these highly abstract drawings to a friend in New York City, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. An art dealer and internationally known photographer, he was the first to exhibit her work in 1916. He would eventually become O’Keeffe’s husband.

In the summer of 1929, O’Keeffe made the first of many trips to northern New Mexico. The stark landscape, distinct indigenous art, and unique regional style of adobe architecture inspired a new direction in O’Keeffe’s artwork. For the next two decades she spent part of most years living and working in New Mexico . She made the state her permanent home in 1949, three years after Stieglitz’s death. O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings coincided with a growing interest in regional scenes by American Modernists seeking a distinctive view of America. Her simplified and refined representations of this region express a deep personal response to the high desert terrain.

In the 1950s, O’Keeffe began to travel internationally. She created paintings that evoked a sense of the spectacular places she visited, including the mountain peaks of Peru and Japan’s Mount Fuji. At the age of seventy-three she embarked on a new series focused on the clouds in the sky and the rivers below.

Suffering from macular degeneration and discouraged by her failing eyesight, O’Keeffe painted her last unassisted oil painting in 1972. But O’Keeffe’s will to create did not diminish with her eyesight. In 1977, at age ninety, she observed, “I can see what I want to paint. The thing that makes you want to create is still there.”

Late in life, and almost blind, she enlisted the help of several assistants to enable her to again create art.  In these works she returned to favorite visual motifs from her memory and vivid imagination.

Georgia O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe, on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.

-  Georgia O'Keeffe Museum 

GUNUNG BROMO PAINTED BY BASOEKI ABDULLAH

BASOEKI ABDULLAH ( 1915-1993)

Gunung Bromo (2,329m - 7,641ft)

Indonesia (Java Timur) 

  In Permandangan Gunung Bromo, 1949, oil on canvas, Basoeki Abdullah Museum 

The mountain 

Gunung Bromo (2,329m - 7,641ft) or Gunung Brama, an active volcano,in East Java, Indonesia,  is not the highest peak of the Tengger massif, but the best known. The massif area is one of the most visited tourist attractions in East Java, Indonesia. The volcano belongs to the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park. The name of Bromo derived from Javanese pronunciation of Brahma, the Hindu creator god. Gunung Bromo sits in the middle of a plain called the "Sea of Sand"  a protected nature reserve since 1919. The best way to visit Gunung Bromo is from the nearby mountain village of Cemoro Lawang, from where it is possible to walk during 45 mn to the volcano. It is also possible to take an organised jeep tour, which includes a stop at the viewpoint on Gunung Penanjakan (2,770 m - 9,088 ft).
On the fourteenth day of the Hindu festival of Yadnya Kasada, the Tenggerese people of Probolinggo, East Java, travel up the mountain in order to make offerings of fruit, rice, vegetables, flowers and sacrifices to the mountain gods by throwing it into the caldera of the volcano. The origin of the ritual lies in the 15th century legend when princess  Roro Anteng started the principality of Tengger with her husband, Joko Seger. The couple were childless and therefore beseeched the assistance of the mountain gods. The gods granted them 24 children but stipulated that the 25th child, named Kesuma, must be thrown into the volcano as a human sacrifice. The gods' request was implemented. The tradition of throwing sacrifices into the volcano to appease these ancient deities continues today and is called the Yadnya Kasada ceremony. Though fraught with danger, some locals risk climbing down into the crater in an attempt to recollect the sacrificed goods that they believe could bring them good luck.
Depending on the degree of volcanic activity, the Indonesian Centre for Volcanology and Disaster Hazard Mitigation sometimes issues warnings against visiting Mount Bromo.
 Mount Bromo recently erupted in 2004, 2010, 2011 and 2015.

The painter 

Basoeki  (or Basuki) Abdullah is one of a the modern master painters of Indonesia, known as a realist and naturalist painter. He has been appointed as the official painter of Merdeka Palace in Jakarta and works adorn palaces and presidential countries Indonesia, in addition to have been collectibles from around the world. His father, Abdullah Suriosubroto, was a famous painter and dancer, while his grandfather,  Doctor Wahidin Sudirohusodo, was a prominent Indonesian National Awakening Movement in the early 1900's. Since the age of 4 years, Basoeki Abdullah began to paint  famous personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and even Jesus Christ and Krishnamurti. His acquired a formal education in the Basoeki Abdullah Catholic and Catholic Mulo in Solo. In 1933,  BasoekiAbdullah obtained a scholarship to study at the Academic Arts in The Hague, Netherlands, and completed his studies within 3 years with awarded Certificate of Royal International of Art (RIA). On 6 September 1948,  during the revolutionary period,  Basoeki Abdullah is housed in Amsterdam (Netherlands) during the coronation of Queen Juliana which held a contest to paint, Basoeki Abdullah defeated 87 European painters and managed to come out as winners.
Since then, the world began to recognize BasoekiAbdullah, during his frequent visits around Europe (Italy and France) and was well known by many resident artists with a worldwide reputation.
BasoekiAbdullah is famous as a portrait painter, especially painting  the royal family and heads of state that tends to beautify or embellish  persons. Aside from being an accomplished portrait painter, he too painted landscapes, mountains, fauna, flora, the themes of struggle, construction and so on.
Basoeki Abdullah held many solo exhibitions both domestically and abroad, among others, his work was exhibited in Bangkok (Thailand), Malaysia, Japan, the Netherlands, England, Portugal... Approximately 22 countries have Basoeki Abdullah paintings in their official collections. Most of his life was spent abroad including several years living in Thailand.

RONDSLOTTET PAINTED BY NIKOLAI ASTRUP

NIKOLAI ASTRUP  (1880-1928)

Rondslotett (2,178m - 7,146ft) 

Norway

In Vinternatt  Rondslottet, oil on canvas

The mountain 

Rondslottet (2,178m - 7,146ft)  is the highest mountain in the Rondane mountain range and is also the highest mountain in the county Hedmark. The landscapes of Rondane are well known to have inspired the work Peer Gynt (1867), a play by Henrik Ibsen, and a opera by Edvard Grieg which is partly set in Rondane. Rondane is the finite plural of the word rond. Several mountains in the area have the ending-ronden (Digerronden, Høgronden, Midtronden, Storronden and Vinjeronden), and this is the finite singular of the same word. The word rond was probably originally the name of the long and narrow lake Rondvatnet ('Rond water/lake') - and the mountains around were then named after this lake. For the meaning see under Randsfjorden.

Rondane National Park (Norwegian: Rondane nasjonalpark) is the oldest national park in Norway, established on 21 December 1962.  The park contains ten peaks above 2,000 metres (6,560 ft), with the highest being Rondeslottet at an altitude (see above). The park is an important habitat for herds of wild reindeer. The park was extended in 2003, and now covers an area of 963 km2 (372 sq mi) in the counties Oppland and Hedmark. Rondane lies just to the east of Gudbrandsdal and two other mountain areas, Dovre and Jotunheimen are nearby.

Visitors to Rondane are free to hike and camp in all areas of the park, except in the immediate vicinity of cabins. Apart from being closed for motor traffic, not many special regulations apply. Fishing and hunting is available to licensees. The Norwegian Mountain Touring Association (DNT) is an association that owns and manages a network of mountain cabins in the service of hikers. In Rondane, there is a central cabin by the southern end of the lake Rondvatnet, Rondvassbu. There is also Dørålseter and Bjørnhollia at the northern and eastern rims of the park. All three cabins are manned, and provide food and limited accommodation. There are also un-manned cabins in the Park, like Eldåbu where a key is needed. The service cabins are also open during the winter season, although they are sometimes only self-serviced off season. Ski trails are marked and sometimes prepared, either by DNT or some of the hotels and skiing resorts close to the park.

The painter 
Nikolai Astrup was a Norwegian painter born in Bremanger in Nordfjord, but grew up in Ålhus in Jølster where his father worked as a priest.  Nikolai studied  drawing and painting subjects in Oslo where he was a student at Harriet Backer's popular school of painting.
He later lived for a while in Paris and in Germany before returning to Jølster. He got married there and had 8 children. The economy was very tight and he struggled with poor health. Astrup died of pneumonia in 1928 at the age of 47.
Astrup preferred clear, strong colors and usually made landscape art depicting his surroundings in Jølster. Having spent the majority of his life in Jølster, the Nordic landscape proved a strong influence and through his paintings he sought 'a national "visual language" that evoked the traditions and folklore of his homeland'. His paintings describe an intimate interaction between nature and the built environment, characterized by bold lines and distinctive rich color. Astrup is regarded as a neo-romantic painter, but he also worked with woodcuts. He is looked upon as one of the greatest Norwegian artists from the early 1900s ; several of his paintings have been sold at auctions for approximately $500,000 USD. Astrup's works have been likened to those of his contemporary Edvard Munch, though Astrup's style has been described as being 'so much brighter – not just in colour, but also in mood'.
Although well known in Norway, Astrup is little-known in the rest of the world. The first exhibition of his work outside of Norway is taking place at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London from 5 February - 15 May 2016. The exhibition will display over 90 oil paintings and prints, including works from private collections never exhibited before.

2017 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

SEVEN WEEKS DEFILE PEAK BY G. J. BEUKES

GERHARD .J. BEUKES (1885 -1945)

Seven Weeks Defile Peak (2,325 m -7,628 ft) 

South Africa (Western Cape) 

In Seweweekspoort, oil on cardboard, 1936, Private collection USA 

The Mountain 

Seven Weeks Defile Peak   (2,325 m -7,628 ft) in Afrikaans Seweweekspoortpiek, is a peak in the Western Cape, South Africa. It is the highest mountain in the Cape Fold Belt and the highest point in the Western Cape province. Along with its western neighbour, Du Toits Peak, it qualifies as an Ultra and these are the only two in the country. It is located in the Klein Swartberg range, close to the Seweweekspoort  mountain pass.

The Swartberg mountains (black mountain in Afrikaans, a mountain range in the Western Cape province of South Africa, is composed of two main mountain chains running roughly east-west along the northern edge of the semi-arid Little Karoo. To the north of the range lies the other large semi-arid area in South Africa, the Great Karoo. Most of the Swartberg Mountains are above 2000 m high, making them the tallest mountains in the Western Cape. It is also one of the longest, spanning some 230 km from south of Laingsburg in the west to between Willowmore and Uniondale in the east. Geologically, these mountains are part of the Cape Fold Belt.

Much of the Swartberg is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The artist

Gerhard J. (Gabriel Jacobus) Beukes was born in a Afrikanner family of Western Cape aerea. He xas active as painter and early photographer in South Africa until the 1940s'. He is known for his landscape and mountains paintings of the Western Cape area and his paintings on cardboard of the Swartberg mountains.  No other information on this painter.  

HIRA MOUNTAINS / 比良山地 BY UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE / 歌川 広重

 UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE / 歌川 広重 (1797-1858)

Hira Mountains or Hira Sanch / 比良山地  (1,214 m - 3,984 ft)

Japan 

1. In A mountain in the snow,  8 Views of Omi, #1, Evening Snow on Mount Hira, 1834, print  

2. In  Evening Snow on Mount Hira, 2010, new colored print 

The paintings
On most of the representations of the Hira Mountains, whatever the artist who painted or drawn them (Hiroshige here or many others up to the present time), we can see herbs leaning from right to left as under effect of the wind. It is the effect of the strong local wind Hira-oroshi which often blows from Hira Mountains to Lake Biwa especially in the late days of March. This wind sometimes sinks boats on the lake and stops trains of the line passing along the foot of the mountains. In every 26 March, Tendai priests hold a memorial service for casualties of shipwreck accidents. This wind is almost an integral part of the representation of the mountain.

The mountains 
The three main peaks of the Hira Mountains are Mount Bunagatake (1,214 m- 3,984 ft) ; Hōraisan, (1,174 m- 3,852 ft),and Mount Uchimi (1,103 m - 3,619 ft).
The Hira Mountains (比良山地 Hira-sanchi) are a mountain range to the west of Lake Biwa on the border of Shiga Prefecture and Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. The range runs 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) north to south. It is narrowest in the southern part of the range, running 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) east to west, and broadest at the northern part of the range, running 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) km east to west. The eastern side of the Hira Mountains looks steeply over Lake Biwa, while the western side of the range forms a gentler valley in Kyoto.

The artist

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

MOUNT ELBRUS PAINTED BY ILYA NIKOLAEVITCH ZANKOVSKY

ILYA NIKOLAEVITCH ZANKOVSKY (1832-1919)

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

Russia 

1. In Mount Elbrus, Caucasus, oil on canvas,  Russian State Museum

2.  In Mountain in Caucasus,  Elbrus, spring, 1874, oil on canvas, Odessa Fine Arts Museum,

3. In  Mountain scene on Mount Elbrus, oil on canvas, 1875, Omsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts 

The paintings

Painting no. 1 is one of the rare ones depicting the Elbrus with a blue sky, as the atmospheric conditions around this majestic sacred mountain are usually tormented. The painter will no doubt have seized this moment by a sweet summer afternoon.

The light in paintings n°2 and n°3 is quite similar, a kind of misty, yellowish halo that coats the whole mass and seems to dissipate only around the glacier, which appears in a surreal whiteness. On the other hand, the staging of the mountain itself is totally different: in the n ° 2, the Mount Elbrus is seen at the plumb of a torrent which releases, in spring, of furious springtime cascades; in no. 3, Mount Elbrus is seen from a pass through which passes a caravan of wrapped merchants who seem to stop in front of the painter.

The mountain
Mount Elbrus (Эльбру́с) also called  Karachay-Balkar (Минги таy) is the highest mountain in Europe, and the seven highest summit in the world.  The seven summit (which are obviously 8, with  2 in Europe !) are : Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Vinson  Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.
Mount Elbrus should not be confused with the Alborz (also called Elburz) mountains in Iran, which also derive their name from the legendary mountain Harā Bərəzaitī in Persian mythology.
A dormant volcano, Elbrus forms part of the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia, near the border with Georgia. Elbrus has two summits, both of which are dormant volcanic domes. With its slightly taller west summit, the mountain stands at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft); the east summit is 5,621 metres (18,442 ft). The lower east summit was first ascended on 10 July 1829 by Khillar Khachirov, a Karachayguide for an Imperial Russian army scientific expedition led by General Emmanuel, and the higher in 1874 by an British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove and including Frederick Gardner, Horace Walker, and the Swiss guide Peter Knubel of St. Niklaus in the canton Valais.
While there are differing authorities on how the Caucasus are distributed between Europe and Asia, most relevant modern authorities define the continental boundary as the Caucasus watershed, placing Elbrus in Europe due to its position on the north side in Russia.
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. Evidence of recent volcanism includes several lava flows on the mountain, which look fresh, and roughly 260 square kilometres (100 sq mi) of volcanic debris. The longest flow extends 24 kilometres (15 mi) down the northeast summit, indicative of a large eruption. There are other signs of activity on the volcano, including solfataric activity and hot springs. 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 Soviet Union encouraged ascents of Elbrus, and in 1956 it was climbed en masse by 400 mountaineers to mark the 400th anniversary of the incorporation of Kabardino-Balkaria, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic where Elbrus was located.
From 1959 through 1976, a cable car system was built in stages that can take visitors as high as 3,800 metres (12,500 ft). There are a wide variety of routes up the mountain, but the normal route, which is free of crevasses, continues more or less straight up the slope from the end of the cable car system. Winter ascents are rare, and are usually undertaken only by very experienced climbers. Elbrus is notorious for its brutal winter weather, and summit attempts are few and far between. The climb is not technically difficult, but it is physically arduous because of the elevations and the frequent strong winds. The average annual death toll on Elbrus is 15–30, primarily due to "many unorganized and poorly equipped" attempts to summit the mountain. Since 1986, Mt. Elbrus has been incorporated into Prielbrusye National Park, one of the Protected areas of Russia.
In 1997 a team led by the Russian mountaineer Alexander Abramov took a Land Rover Defender to the summit of the East Peak, breaking into the Guinness Book of Records. The project took 45 days in total. They were able to drive the vehicle as high as the mountain huts at The Barrels (3,800 metres (12,500 ft)), but above this they used a pulley system to raise it most of the way. On the way down, a driver lost control of the vehicle and had to dive out.
The second was Kevin Cooney, and the third Patrick Healy.
Regular competitions began to take place since 2005 is a choice of two routes: the classic and extreme. In 2006, on the route of extreme glade Azau (2400 m) - the western summit of Elbrus (5642 m asl) Denis Urubko set a record by winning the tour time 3 hours 55 minutes 59 seconds.
The Pole Aleksandra Dzik won the female competition on this route, becoming both the first woman graduated from extreme gear.

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

_______________________________

2017 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

LHOTSE PAINTED BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947)

Lhotse  (8, 516m - 27, 940ft) 

China (Tibet Autonomous Region)

Nepal (Khumbu)  

In Pink  Peak Himalayas,  Lhotse from Goralshep,1940, tempera on cardboard (30,5 cm x 47,5 cm)   

The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg 

The mountain 

Lhotse (8, 516 m - 27, 940 ft), which means “South Peak” in Tibetan is the fourth highest mountain in the world  after Mount Everest, K2, and Kangchenjunga. Part of the Everest massif, Lhotse is connected to the latter peak via the South Col. 

 In addition to the main summit, the mountain comprises the smaller peaks Lhotse Middle (8,414 m- 27,605 ft) and Lhotse Shar (8,383 m - 27,503 ft). The summit is on the border between Tibet and the Khumbu region of Nepal.

The main summit of Lhotse was first climbed on May 18, 1956, by the Swiss team of Ernst Reiss and Fritz Luchsinger from the Swiss Mount Everest/Lhotse Expedition. On May 12, 1970, Sepp Mayerl and Rolf Walter of Austria made the first ascent of Lhotse Shar.  Lhotse Middle remained, for a long time, the highest unclimbed named point on Earth; on May 23, 2001, its first ascent was made by Eugeny Vinogradsky, Sergei Timofeev, Alexei Bolotov and Petr Kuznetsov of a Russian expedition.

By December 2008, 371 climbers had summitted Lhotse while 20 died during their attempt. 

Lhotse was not summited in 2014, 2015, or 2016 due to a series of incidents, however, it was summited again in May 2017. 

The painter 
Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих) is quite an important figure of mountain paintings in the early 20th century.  He was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure. In his youth was he was quite influenced by a movement in Russian society around the occult and was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices. His paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.
Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art. After the February Revolution of 1917 and the end of the czarist regime, Roerich, a political moderate who valued Russia's cultural heritage more than ideology and party politics, had an active part in artistic politics. With Maxim Gorky and Aleksandr Benois, he participated with the so-called "Gorky Commission" and its successor organization, the Arts Union (SDI).
After the October Revolution and the acquisition of power of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, Roerich became increasingly discouraged about Russia's political future. During early 1918, he, Helena, and their two sons George and Sviatoslav emigrated to Finland. After some months in Finland and Scandinavia, the Roerichs relocated to London, arriving in mid-1919. Later, a successful exhibition resulted in an invitation from a director at the Art Institute of Chicago, offering to arrange for Roerich's art to tour the United States. During the autumn of 1920, the Roerichs traveled to America by sea.  The Roerichs remained in the United States from October 1920 until May 1923.
After leaving New York, the Roerichs – together with their son George and six friends – began the five-year-long 'Roerich Asian Expedition' that, in Roerich's own words: "started from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oyrot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet" with a detour through Siberia to Moscow in 1926.
In 1929 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. He received two more nominations in 1932 and 1935. His concern for peace resulted in his creation of the Pax Cultura, the "Red Cross" of art and culture. His work for this cause also resulted in the United States and the twenty other nations of the Pan-American Union signing the Roerich Pact on April 15, 1935 at the White House. The Roerich Pact is an early international instrument protecting cultural property.
In 1934–1935, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (then headed by Roerich admirer Henry A. Wallace) sponsored an expedition by Roerich and USDA scientists H. G. MacMillan and James F. Stephens to Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, and China.
Roerich was in India during the Second World War, where he painted Russian epic heroic and saintly themes, including: Alexander Nevsky, The Fight of Mstislav...
In 1942, Roerich received Jawaharlal Nehru at his house in Kullu. Together they discussed the fate of the new world: "We spoke about Indian-Russian cultural association, it is time to think about useful and creative cooperation ...”.
Gandhi would later recall about several days spent together with Roerich's family: "That was a memorable visit to a surprising and gifted family where each member was a remarkable figure in himself, with a well-defined range of interests." ..."Roerich himself stays in my memory. He was a man with extensive knowledge and enormous experience, a man with a big heart, deeply influenced by all that he observed". During the visit, "ideas and thoughts about closer cooperation between India and USSR were expressed. Now, after India wins independence, they have got its own real implementation[clarification needed]. And as you know, there are friendly and mutually-understanding relationships today between both our countries".
In 1942, the American-Russian cultural Association (ARCA) was created in New York.
Its active participants were Ernest Hemingway, Rockwell Kent, Charlie Chaplin, Emil Cooper, Serge Koussevitzky, and Valeriy Ivanovich Tereshchenko. The Association's activity was welcomed by scientists like Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton.  Roerich died on December 13, 1947.
Presently, the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City is a major institution for Roerich's artistic work. Numerous Roerich societies continue to promote his theosophical teachings worldwide. His paintings can be seen in several museums including the Roerich Department of the State Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow; the Roerich Museum at the International Centre of the Roerichs in Moscow; the Russian State Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; a collection in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; a collection in the Art Museum in Novosibirsk, Russia; an important collection in the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria; a collection in the Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod Russia; National Museum of Serbia ; the Roerich Hall Estate in Nagar village in Kullu Valley, India; the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram, India; in various art museums in India; and a selection featuring several of his larger works in The Latvian National Museum of Art.

_______________________________

2017 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

DER NIESEN PAINTED BY CUNO AMIET

CUNO AMIET (1868-1961)
Der Niesen  (2, 362m - 7,749ft)

Switzerland

 1. In  Thunersee mit Niesen, 1931 oil on canvas

2.  In Thunersee mit Niesen, 1932, watercolor

The mountain 

The Niesen (2, 362m - 7,749ft)  is a mountain of the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. It overlooks Lake Thun, in the Bernese Oberland region, and forms the northern end of a ridge that stretches north from the Albristhorn and Mannliflue, separating the Simmental and Kandertal valleys. The literal translation of the German word "Niesen" is  "sneeze", but the Niesen because of its shape, is often called The Swiss Pyramid. Administratively, the summit is shared between the municipalities of Reichenbach im Kandertal, to the south-east, and Wimmis, to the west and north. Both municipalities are in the canton of Bern. The summit of the mountain can be reached easily by using the Niesenbahn funicular from Mülenen (near Reichenbach). The construction of the funicular was completed in 1910. Alongside the path of the Niesenbahn is the longest stairway in the world with 11,674 steps. It is open only once a year to the public for a stair run.
The literal translation of the German word Niesen is sneeze. Because of its shape, the Niesen is often called the Swiss Pyramid.  Since the 18th century, the Niesen was the subject of a number of paintings which will all be published in this blog, one by one. The Ferdinand Holder's paintings are the two first ones to have been published. The Niesen was also the subject of a number of paintings by Paul Klee, in which it was represented as a quasi-pyramid.

The painter 
Cuno Amiet was a Swiss painter, illustrator, graphic artist and sculptor. As the first Swiss painter to give precedence to colour in composition, he was a pioneer of modern art in Switzerland.
After studies with the painter Frank Buchser, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 1886–88, where he befriended Giovanni Giacometti. In 1888-92, Giacometti and Amiet continued their studies in Paris, where Amiet studied at the Académie Julian under Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Tony Robert-Fleury and Gabriel Ferrier.
Amiet created more than 4,000 paintings, of which more than 1,000 are self-portraits. The great scope of his work of 70 years, and Amiet's predilection for experimentation, make his œuvre appear disparate at first – a constant, though, is the primacy of colour.  His numerous landscape paintings depict many winter scenes, gardens and fruit harvests. Ferdinand Hodler remained a constant point of reference, although Amiet's artistic intentions diverged ever further from those of Hodler, whom Amiet could and would not match in his mastery of monumental scale and form.
While Amiet took up themes of expressionism, his works retain a sense of harmony of colour grounded in the French tradition. He continued to pursue mainly decorative intentions at the beginning of the 20th century, but his late work of the 1940s and 50s is focused on more abstract concepts of space and light, characterised by dots of colour and a pastel brilliance.

KILAUEA PAINTED BY AMBROSE PATTERSON

AMBROSE MC CARTHY PATTERSON (1877-1966) 

Mount Kilauea  (1,247 m - 4,091 ft) 

United States of America (Hawaï)  

In Mount Kilauea,  the house of Everlasting Fire, 1917 oil on canvas, Honolulu Museum of Art  

The mountain 
Kilauea (1,247 m - 4,091 ft) is a currently active shield volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and the most active of the five volcanoes that together form the island of Hawaiʻi. Located along the southern shore of the island, the volcano is between 300,000 and 600,000 years old and emerged above sea level about 100,000 years ago. It is the second youngest product of the Hawaiian hotspot and the current eruptive center of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. Because it lacks topographic prominence and its activities historically coincided with those of Mauna Loa, Kīlauea was once thought to be a satellite of its much larger neighbor. Structurally, Kīlauea has a large, fairly recently formed caldera at its summit and two active rift zones, one extending 125 km (78 mi) east and the other 35 km (22 mi) west, as an active fault of unknown depth moving vertically an average of 2 to 20 mm (0.1 to 0.8 in) per year.
Kīlauea's eruptive history has been a long and active one; its name means "spewing" or "much spreading" in the Hawaiian language, referring to its frequent outpouring of lava. The earliest lavas from the volcano date back to its submarine preshield stage, samples having been recovered by remotely operated underwater vehicles from its submerged slopes; samples of other flows have been recovered as core samples. Lavas younger than 1,000 years cover 90 percent of the volcano's surface. The oldest exposed lavas date back 2,800 years. The first well-documented eruption of Kīlauea occurred in 1823 (Western contact and written history began in 1778), and since that time the volcano has erupted repeatedly. Most historical eruptions have occurred at the volcano's summit or its eastern rift zone, and are prolonged and effusive in character. The geological record shows, however, that violent explosive activity predating European contact was extremely common, and in 1790 one such eruption killed over 80 warriors; should explosive activity start anew the volcano would become much more of a danger to humans. Kīlauea's current eruption dates back to January 3, 1983, and is by far its longest-duration historical period of activity, as well as one of the longest-duration eruptions in the world; as of January 2011, the eruption has produced 3.5 km3 (1 cu mi) of lava and resurfaced 123.2 km2 (48 sq mi) of land.
Kīlauea's high state of activity has a major impact on its mountainside ecology where plant growth is often interrupted by fresh tephra and drifting volcanic sulfur dioxide, producing acid rains particularly in a barren area south of its southwestern rift zone known as the Kaʻū Desert. Nonetheless, wildlife flourishes where left undisturbed elsewhere on the volcano and is highly endemic thanks to Kīlauea's (and the island of Hawaiʻi's) isolation from the nearest landmass. Historically, the five volcanoes on the island were considered sacred by the Hawaiian people, and in Hawaiian mythology Kīlauea's Halemaumau Crater served as the body and home of Pele, goddess of fire, lightning, wind, and volcanoes. William Ellis, a missionary from England, gave the first modern account of Kīlauea and spent two weeks traveling along the volcano; since its foundation by Thomas Jaggar in 1912, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, located on the rim of Kilauea caldera, has served as the principal investigative and scientific body on the volcano and the island in general. In 1916 a bill forming the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson; since then the park has become a World Heritage Site and a major tourist destination, attracting roughly 2.6 million people annually.

The painter 
Ambrose McCarthy Patterson  was a painter and printmaker, born in Daylesford, Victoria (Australia). He studied at the Melbourne Art School under E. Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker, at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne and continued his studies in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian under Lucien Simon, André Lhote and Maxime Maufra. In Paris he became a friend of compatriot Nellie Melba, the famous soprano; Patterson's brother, Tom, was married to Melba's sister, Belle. Through Melba's influence, he was able to continue his studies with John Singer Sargent. He became part of the Paris arts scene and exhibited at the first Salon d'Automne exhibitions. He had five paintings at the 1905 Paris Salon at which Henri Matisse and the fauves stunned the art world.
He arrived in Hawaii in 1916 on a stopover from Sidney to New York, and decided to stay with a Parisian friend living in Honolulu. During the next 18 months, Patterson made block prints and paintings with particular interest in Kilauea. His art was included in the Hawaiian Society of Artists Annual in 1917. He left for California in 1918 and settled in Seattle. At the 1918 Spring Annual of the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) his wood block prints were said to be "especially fine in color." That summer his art was given a one-man exhibition at the SFAA galleries and he contributed three color prints (The Steeple Chase, The Bull Fight, and The Long Beach) to the Seventh Annual of the California Society of Etchers.
By September 1918 Patterson had moved to Seattle to work as a freelance artist, perhaps being the first modern artist in that city, and that fall his art was given a solo show at the Seattle Fine Arts Society, the first of many exhibitions in Washington State. In 1919 he established the University of Washington School of Painting and Design. Patterson married painter and former student Viola Hansen in 1922, and the two became major figures of the arts in the Pacific Northwest region. Patterson taught until his retirement in 1947. He died in Seattle in 1966 leaving behind an impressive record of awards received and exhibitions across the United States, including the: Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the World’s Fairs in San Francisco and New York City.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery (Australia) (Canberra), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum are among the public collections holding works by Ambrose McCarthy Patterson.

THABANA NTLENYANA PAINTED BY JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEFF

JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEF (1886-1957)

Thabana Ntlenyana (3, 482m - 11, 424ft) 

South Africa, Lesotho 

In Maluti Mountains, oil on canvas, 1929

The mountain 

Thabana Ntlenyana  (3,482m - 11, 424ft)  which literally means "Beautiful little mountain" in Sesotho, is the highest point in Lesotho and the highest mountain in southern Africa. It is situated on the Mohlesi ridge of the Drakensberg/Maloti Mountains, north of Sani Pass.  The peak is usually climbed by groups completing a Grand Traverse of the Drakensberg - even though the peak is technically in the Maloti Mountains.

The Maloti Mountains, also spelled Maluti are a mountain range of the highlands of the Kingdom of Lesotho. They extend for about 100 km into the Free State. The Maloti Range is part of the Drakensberg system that includes ranges across large areas of South Africa. “Maloti” is also the plural for Loti, the currency of the Kingdom of Lesotho. The range forms the northern portion of the boundary between the Butha-Buthe District in Lesotho and South Africa’s Orange Free State.

The painter 
Jacobus Hendrik (Henk) Pierneef (usually referred to as Pierneef)  was a South African landscape artist, generally considered to be one of the best of the old South African masters. His distinctive style is widely recognized and his work was greatly influenced by the South African landscape.
Most of his landscapes were of the South African highveld, which provided a lifelong source of inspiration for him. Pierneef's style was to reduce and simplify the landscape to geometric structures, using flat planes, lines and colour to present the harmony and order in nature. This resulted in formalised, ordered and often-monumental view of the South African landscape, uninhabited and with dramatic light and colour.
Pierneef's work can be seen worldwide in many private, corporate and public collections, including the Africana Museum, Durban Art Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, King George VI Art Gallery, Pierneef Museum and the Pretoria Art Gallery.

EARNSLAW / PIKIRAKATAHI PAINTED BY CHARLES BLOMFIELD

CHARLES BLOMFIELD (1848-1926)

  Mount Earnslaw or Pikirakatahi  (2,819m -9,249 ft)

 New Zealand  

In Mount Earnslaw from head of Lake Wakatipu, oil on canvas, 1885 

The Mountain 

Mount Earnslaw, (2,819m -9,249 ft) also named Pikirakatahi by Māori is located on New Zealand's South Island. It is named after Earnslaw (formerly Herneslawe) village in the parish of Eccles, Berwickshire, hometown of the surveyor John Turnbull Thomson's father.

Mount Earnslaw is within Mount Aspiring National Park at the southern end of the Forbes Range of New Zealand's Southern Alps. It is located 25 kilometres north of the settlement of Glenorchy, which lies at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu. 

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.

MANGART PAINTED BY MARCUS PERNHART

MARCUS PERNHART (1824-1871)

Mangart (2,679 m - 8, 789ft) 

Slovenia, Italy border

Painted from the Italian side 

The mountain 
Mangart  (2,679 m - 8, 789ft) also called  Mangrt or Veliki Mangart is a mountain in the Julian Alps, located on the border between Italy and Slovenia. It is, after Triglav and Skrlatica, the third-highest peak in Slovenia. It was first climbed in 1794 by the naturalist Franz von Hohenwart. Mangart is also the name of the mountain range between the Koritnica Valley and the Mangart Valley.
The road to Mangart Saddle (2,072 m- 6,798 ft) is the highest road in Slovenia. The Mangart Pass Hut is located at the western foot of Mangart. Two lakes under Mangart's northern face are situated on the italian side of the mountain.

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.
When Pernharts drawing style had fully developed, he was asked by Max from Moro to draw all Castles Carinthia. The idea was to these buildings if they could often for financial reasons can not be obtained, at least to preserve the picture, thereby preserving from decay. Markus Pernhart does not disappoint its customers and held in pencil drawings smallest details of the well-preserved, but also the already partly decayed plants firmly. Already in 1853, he produced 40 drawings followed by 198 others, he property of the Historical Association for Carinthia. In 1855  he gave the Carinthian estates Empress Elisabeth, an album of 21 drawings to which Max Moro contributed. Entitled images from Carinthia  appeared  in 1863-1868 in deliveries as steel engravings with accompanying. After his death appeared 5 lithographic panoramic images (Klagenfurt in 1875 and 1889).
His entire painted oeuvre consists of approximately 1,200  paintings, drawings and enrgavings that delight even after his death a large appreciation.
Pernhart presented landscapes, preferably lakes and high mountain motifs or castles, but also animals and still life subjects, in an idyllic and pathetic style. His works can be seen against the background of an incipient leisure society, they lead before the regional status objects of his home.

PICO CRISTOBAL COLON / CHUNDUAKE IN VINTAGE POSTCARD

VINTAGE POSTCARD 1939

Pico Cristóbal Colón / Chunduake  (5 ,775 m - 18, 947 ft) 

Colombia

The mountain
Pico Cristóbal Colón / Chunduake (5,775 m) is the highest point of Colombia and the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, probably in front of its neighbor, the Simón Bolívar peak. Because of its equatorial position, it is the fifth highest peak in the world by its height.. It is located about 70 kilometers southeast of Santa Marta, 130 kilometers east of Barranquilla and 700 kilometers north of Bogota, while the border with Venezuela passes 100 kilometers east-southeast . The coasts of the Caribbean Sea are less than 45 kilometers to the north. The altitude of the summit is uncertain, between 5,7003, 5,7304 and 5,775 meters above sea level, very near but probably higher than that of Simón Bolívar peak at 670 meters to the southwest. It is home to an icefield that has been in decline for fifty years.
It is named in homage to Christopher Columbus but among the Arhuacos, the summit is called Chunduake. It is the only one that has an indigenous name in the sierra, the main summits being collectively identified as Chundua (the "mountains" or "dwelling of the dead"), the throne of the god Kakarua Viku.
The first attempt to ascend the Cristóbal Colón peak in 1936 resulted in the death of the mountaineer Hans Lötscher after a fall in a crevasse, while he was accompanied by his compatriot Willy Weber. According to the sources, they are emigrants of German, Swiss or Austrian origin.
In 1939 Walter Wood, Anderson Bakerwell, and E. Praolini succeeded by the eastern edge of the first ascent of the summit, on the occasion of a cartographic expedition organized by the American Society of Geography and conducted by Thomas D. Cabot, 6. The second ascent was made by the Swiss couple Frédéric and Dorly Marmillod in February 1943.
In January 1957, Piero Ghiglione made the first ascent of the south face, alone.
The Cristóbal Colón peak has been protected since 1964 in the Santa Marta Sierra Nevada National Park, which covers 3,830 square kilometers.

MOUNT ROBSON BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970) 

Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) 

Canada  (British Columbia)

The Mountain 

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

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

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

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

The painter 

Lawren Stewart Harris, (1885–1970) was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.

In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)

For Harris, art was to express spiritual values as well as to represent the visible world. North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), an image of a solitary weathered tree stump surrounded by an expanse of dramatically lit sky, effectively evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.

The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. Several members of the Group of Seven later became members of the Canadian Group of Painters including Harris, A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.

From 1934 to 1937, Harris lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he painted his first abstract works, a direction he would continue for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and helped found the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of artists who advocated a spiritual form of abstraction.

In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist. He was buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where his work is now held.

On November 26, 2015 his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works.

In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.